


Middle Ground

by Karthur



Category: Tales of Graces
Genre: F/M, I think I broke him, awkwaaaaaaard, two trainwrecks make for great fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-21
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2017-11-16 19:11:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karthur/pseuds/Karthur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hubert Oswell was a man who craved Order. Pascal brought him Chaos. Together, they learned to find Balance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chaos

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Pengie and Joh for their beta reading skills.

Hubert Oswell was a man who craved Order. Everything had a purpose and everything had a place, whether it was the location of a favorite book in his library case or the precise time of day he would take lunch. He'd learned, over his short life of twenty years, that people would often disappoint him, even abandon him, but Order never would.

With Order, there were plans. There could be plans for every imaginable contingency and every possible disappointing outcome. Plans could be molded into structure and structure into action. When actions or structures failed, he could always return to the plans, to Order, to find a solution.

Order was comforting to him in ways that people never managed to be. It never gave him away like an unwanted dog with no explanation or even a chance to say good-bye. It never struck him, whether by words or by switch, when disappointed with his performance in school or household chores. It never expected him sacrifice his own beliefs or desires to become another corrupt cog in a disgusting political machine. Order only marched, like a well-trained soldier, to a perpetually even beat-never stopping, never quitting, and certainly never judging him.

So, a little over two years ago, when he found himself desperately in love with the woman who personified Chaos, he did what he always would do: he analyzed. He tried to understand this attraction, and in turn, understand her. Was it her intelligence? Her ridiculous manner of speech? Her sense of adventure that kept her away for weeks at a time? Her compassion for everything even if she seemed aloof? Her seemingly blind faith that no matter what things would be okay? The way she kept him guessing about everything?

Each one had possibilities, but after considering the matter for countless nights, he realized it was probably just the simple fact that she put up with him.

Chaos came in the form of Pascal, who would always drop into his life and pleasantly screw it up for a short time before disappearing again. She was part explorer, part researcher, part mechanical engineer, all genius, and completely eccentric. She never had a plan, or a schedule, and usually couldn't even be bothered to tell him when she was coming into town. Ruins were her first love, machines were her second, and if he had to guess, he was a distant third.

It had started out slow. Backwards, even. For three months after their return from Fodra, they traded messages on her communicator devices. Those tiny snippets of text tried terribly to connect them together, but always failed. Still, he'd spend hours crafting the simplest note, debating the implications of each word and every bit of punctuation. In response, he'd receive a line or two, sometimes coherent, most times not, but each one was a treasured read, no matter how brief or how inane the subject.

Then, one night, she sent a message that was a peculiar question. _"Can the streaks in Foselos can really keep you awake on a clear desert night?"_

Rather than dismiss it as childish or retort with a smart remark, he typed, _"come visit and find out."_

He hoped it wasn't too forward. But he did miss her, and the little bits of text transmitted between them left so much to be desired. He wanted to talk to her again, like they talked before. He wanted to feel that terrifying little thrill of standing next to her and wondering what to say next, where the art of crafting a mere conversation became a sudden and delightful challenge. No matter how articulate and well read he was, she could leave him stammering for words and blissfully confused. He wanted to see her smile that bright, goofy, carefree grin and let a tepid laugh escape his own stern lips.

Much as he hated to admit it, he missed being happy. And he missed her.

Ten long days he waited, with no response to his message, despite his obsessive checking of the communicator. He would even wake from a deep sleep to glance at the thing in the hopes that she had replied in the middle of the night, since her sense of timing was always rather unique. But still nothing came aside from his own doubts about the message he'd sent. Perhaps she misunderstood? Perhaps she thought he was kidding or being sarcastic? Or, perhaps she had no desire to see him at all.

He had all but given up. But then, when returning home from work one evening, he saw her lying face up on a bench under the fountain near his father's manor. She was sprawled across the bench, with her head hanging off the end, and watching the world go by upside down. He resisted the urge to run up to her, lest he cause a scene. In measured, even steps, he approached, trying to ignore the breathless feeling that was constricting his chest. Damn her for having that effect on him.

"Hey!" she shouted, not moving from her awkward position. "Are you ready!?"

She was a constant blur of confusion, but this time he honestly had no idea what she was talking about. "Ready?"

Jumping up to stand in front of him, she gave a ridiculous twirl, her mop of red and white hair sweeping along with the odd effort. "To see Foselos! I have this amazing idea about it, the skies are totally clear tonight, and you said to come see them, so here I am!"

He glanced away. So that's why she'd come. For her research. Not for him. He probably should've expected that. "Oh."

"I knocked on the door but the maid said I couldn't come in because I'd bring in too much filth," she said, as she glanced over her shoulder at the ornate entrance to his home. She laughed, oblivious to the insult. "But whatever! I'm here now and watching the water go splash-splash overhead made me sleepy so I had a great nap!"

He frowned. "My apologies. I will speak with my father's staff. If they intend to turn away my guests, they can seek other employment."

"It's no biggie. Don't get her in trouble. My shoes are really full of sand," she said before giving him a bigger grin and playfully tugging on his arm. "Well, are you gonna get your stuff so we can go? I made a picnic basket!"

"I dread to know what's in it," he answered, knowing her eating habits were just as eccentric as she was.

"Aw, don't be like that!" she laughed. "I went by Lhant and got some of those rice omelette things you like from your mom. She was so awesome. She made them just for you and wrapped them up really cute!"

"You…what?" he said, his eyes widening in surprise. To think she had made such an effort on his behalf just made his heart race a little more. Perhaps Foselos wasn't the only reason she was here after all.

"Yeah, it's what took me so long. Plus, then I got talking to Sophie and Cheria, and two days had passed before I even realized—"

"You lost two days talking?" he interrupted. Though, at this point, nothing she did should've surprised him. It hardly ever made sense.

She shrugged. "We had a lot to talk about."

"I can only imagine," he answered with a tiny smile. Smiles were rare from him, but they seemed easier to form when she was around.

"So, get your stuff so we can go!" she said, tugging on his arm impatiently. "It'll be dark soon and we'll miss it!"

He wasn't sure how one could miss Foselos, as it was always in the sky, used as a compass by travelers around the world. But, it was an invitation he couldn't refuse. And so, within the hour, they were already on their way out into the desert as anxious questions began to form in his mind. He took her to a spot he knew, one not far from the capital, but distant enough that the city lights wouldn't distract from the view.

She spread a blanket down on the sand, sat facing him, and then offered him the contents of the basket after taking out her usual bizarre meal—bananas and a banana pie. Looking at the food she brought, it was evident she really did venture all the way to Lhant. She had delivered what she had said earlier, and his mother had even included the spicy tomato sauce he liked to put on the omelettes.

Throughout the entire meal, she remained silent, and silence wasn't something she did well. She did make a conscious effort to chew with her mouth closed, but not one for any kind of conversation. She did not even offer her usual insane ramblings about machines and technology, and that worried him.

After they had finished eating, there was still a long, uncomfortable silence. Although Hubert was nervous where the discussion would go, he tried to start with something innocuous. "Is your latest research going well?"

"Yeah," she answered, her voice oddly distant. "For now anyway. I mean, I think a massive communication system that people can use is like a totally great idea but I don't know if the three countries will really fund it. Plus, I gotta, like y'know, figure out exactly how the images and sounds will be transmitted beyond beep-beep-boop-be-doop but I was thinking I could use Foselos somehow. I'm close to a total breakthrough, but erm…" She paused and looked him, fixing her eyes on his. "But I don't really want to talk about research tonight."

That was completely unexpected. "Why not?"

"Because," she said, looking down at the blanket. "Because you keep screwing it up so I haven't gotten much new stuff done."

"How have I screwed it up?" he asked, completely perplexed.

The answer was simple and quiet. "You distract me."

He couldn't fathom how she could ever be distracted; she _lived_ distracted. "I fail to see how that's possible considering I haven't seen you in three months."

"It's true," she answered, glancing up to meet his gaze again. Her words came in a flurry of confusion, even by her own off-kilter standard for normal speech. "I like getting your messages. I like getting them a lot and when I get them I feel all flutter-fluttery and I want more messages. So then I write you back and I get all nervous and gwah-wah hoping you're going to write back and then when you do, I feel warm and sheezy and it happens all over again because the messages never end and I never think about what I'm doing anymore! I just think about those messages and I think about you and what you're doing and how I want to chit-chat with you about stuff like we used to! Then I want go see you but I don't know if you're busy-busy with all your military stuff and I don't want to be in the way because I don't want you to like get in trouble with like the President or something." She barely took a breath before adding, "remember that last night on Telos Astue? Remember what you said to me?"

He was certain his mouth was hanging open in surprise, but didn't care. "Yes, of course I do," he said, the words nearly catching in his throat. They were much more sour than he had intended, as the embarrassing and infuriating memory of telling her how much he cared for her while she completely missed the point was not something he liked to dwell upon.

"Well now I know what you were talking about because now I have that same problem!" she said, clenching her fists and rising up on her knees to scoot nearer to him. "I can't wake up without you on the brain! And it's making my work impossible!"

Her words, and their implications, struck him nearly speechless as he felt his palms begin to sweat. It was everything he had always wanted to hear from her, and yet somehow, it terrified him. When he had imagined this moment, he always had something intelligent, even romantic to say. But all he managed now was an accusatory question: "do you even realize what you're saying?"

Undeterred by his unintentionally harsh question, she leaned even closer to him, so close that he could feel her breath on his neck. "Yeah, I do. It kinda scares me cuz it's all new and like crazy, but it's a good kind of scared." She put her palm to his cheek and held his gaze. "But yeah. I know."

"Pascal…" He heard himself whisper her name, as if that was enough of a response to the dizzying confession she had just made. Her words may have been jumbled, unconventional, and confused, but they were genuine and they were _beautiful._

For a long, anxious moment they just looked at each other, her eyes searching his, following his every glance with tender desire. Her nearness, her warmth, and the sweet scent of machine oil and bananas teased him, encouraged him. Brushing a bit of her wild bangs to the side, he finally kissed her. Fully, passionately, making sure through the effort that she understood this was what he'd always wanted.

Her hands splayed wide across his chest, pulling him closer, breathlessly returning the affection.

When the kiss eventually broke, she rested her forehead against his and smiled. "Wow."

"I agree with that sentiment," he replied, pressing his glasses back up his nose with one hand and allowing the other to rest on her back.

She wrapped her arms around his waist. "I guess Cheria was wrong."

"Huh?" was the ineloquent reply. He was still wondering if this was real or just some wild dream conjured by the desert.

"She said that would fix the problem, but I think it made it worse."

None of the conversation was really registering with him. Every last nerve in his body was tingling with a welcome anxiety. "What?"

Biting her lip, she gave him a wink. "Well, now instead of more messages, I want more of that."

From that day, things between them didn't really go forward, but _sideways_. Everything with her was a zig and a zag and sometimes even twisted into serpentines. She never stayed in one place for very long so they saw each other as they could. It was mostly by chance as she could never keep a schedule, and much as that disrupted his precious Order, he learned to accept it as well as all of her idiosyncrasies.

In between those usually unannounced visits and unplanned meetings, there were messages, and most importantly, there were lessons. She taught him things he would've never considered possible—or worthy study—before.

She shared her knowledge of technology that was far beyond anything he'd ever known, even teaching him how to fly the shuttle. She taught him the language of the Amarcians, though it wasn't really spoken much anymore. She showed him how to laugh at things, how to smile again, and how to lose some of that arrogance and anger that he'd built up over the years. Most importantly, though, she helped him rebuild the trust in people he swore he'd lost years ago.

A particularly special lesson from her came nearly eighteen months after that first heavenly kiss in the desert. On a beautiful autumn day, while family and friends were gathered in Lhant for his brother's wedding, she made him understand that life shouldn't be scripted and that being reckless could be fun.

That day, he proudly wore his dress uniform and stood up next to his brother while he said his vows. He kept looking at Pascal during the ceremony, standing behind Sophie, smiling that uncanny grin. Entranced in how beautiful she looked in the simple, strapless dark green dress, he almost forgot in which pocket he had placed the rings. When she noticed him glancing at her, she winked, and pulled at the sopherias that she wore in her hair.

Evening came and the party began in the town square. It was a carousel of food, wine, music, and laughter that he knew his mother had spent nearly every waking moment of the last year envisioning and planning. Shortly before the formal meal began, Pascal grabbed his sleeve and dragged him away from the festivities. With only minimal protest, he let her lead him back up to the hill where Asbel and Cheria had said their vows only hours before. It was truly a sight; the flowers were painting a riot of color against the sunset, and the huge tree at the back of the meadow glowed warmly from the bits of cryas that had been hung on it for the wedding.

"You said you needed something," he said. "What is it? They're going to miss us."

"I doubt it."

"We're both seated at the head table. It's kind of obvious if we're not there."

"We are here. There. Whatever. Quit worrying so much, sheesh."

He sighed. "And once again, you are completely missing the point or ignoring me."

"I have to fix something," she said, running to the side of the cliff and looking down. With a smirk, she quickly unfastened the high heeled shoes that she had been wearing and unceremoniously tossed them over the side. "Oops. Those things suck."

"All better?" he asked, unable to resist the urge to grin. "We need to get back. I remind you that I'm supposed to give the toast, and that's scheduled to happen soon."

"What? Seriously? Who schedules things at a wedding? That's totally lame."

"Most people."

"I wouldn't."

"Allow me to quantify: most normal people."

"Normal-schmormal," she said, twirling around in the field of flowers. "When I get married, it's not going to be some stuffy boring wearing-shoes-that-hurt-like-hell and this nasty-crap-Cheria-put-on-my-eyes party."

"They are completely new inventions called eyeliner and mascara," he teased, but couldn't ignore the fact that she had mentioned that she had put some kind of thought—no matter how fleeting—into her own wedding. Whether or not it included him, it still made him curious. "You've actually thought about this?"

She stopped spinning and trotted up to him. Touching her chin in thought, she smiled as she spoke. "Of course I have! All girls do y'know. It'll be at the beach resort and everyone will wear beach clothes! I'll wear a cute little sundress and no shoes, and we'll eat banana bread, banana pudding, bananas dipped in chocolate, and of course banana pies! Oh, I'll decorate with sand sculptures of the Sunscreen Rangers, and beach balls and snorkels and fins! I'll build some machines to automatically fill people's glasses with booze and we will just totally party! No schedules. No speeches. No heels. No makeup."

"That sounds…completely bizarre and yet some how, quite appropriate."

She grabbed his hands, entwining her fingers with his as she grinned up at him. "Oh, and you have to jump out of a cake! While wearing that uniform you have on because you look totally awesome in it."

"And what place of honor would I hold by jumping out of a cake?" he asked, his cheeks flushing at the compliment.

"Well, I'm not going to marry myself! That would be totally weird!" she laughed, still holding his hands hostage.

He tugged her closer and asked seriously, "are you saying that you want to get married?"

"Well sure, someday," she said, the thought as short-lived as the breeze that had picked up. Shivering, she pulled back from him and rubbed her arms. "Who makes a dress with no sleeves or straps or pockets and so long that you can trip on it? I'm only wearing this ridiculous thing for Cheria. Because seriously? It's totally hideous."

He unbuttoned his jacket and placed it over her shoulders, a bit disappointed the conversation had changed so quickly. "You look absolutely stunning."

She stretched her arms through the sleeves, but on her petite frame, it hung to her knees. "Pfft. Totally not my thing. Don't get used to seeing me like this." Placing her hand in one of the pockets of the jacket, she pulled out a piece of paper. "What's this?"

"My speech. The one I'm supposed to be giving…oh, right about now."

"Do it later," she said, unfolding the paper and reading it aloud, imitating his voice as she did so. "'Dear family, friends, and dignified guests…' What the hell? Who talks like this? That's a little stiff, even for you!"

He reached for it, but she playfully held it out of his grasp. "Give it back."

Still pretending to speak in his voice, she continued reading. "'I am honored to have been asked to blah-blah-blah." Laughing, she shook head. "This is a wedding, not a military report, Hu."

"Just…give it back."

She relented, but only after touching his chest. "Stuff like this needs to come from here…not…wherever this came from."

Sighing, he tucked the paper into his trouser pocket. "This isn't exactly my forte, all right?"

Leaning her back against his chest, she drew his arms around her waist. "You just need to say nice things about Asbel and Cheria and how happy you are for them. You're a smart guy. You can think of something that isn't totally lame and boring."

"A smart guy doesn't leave his brother's wedding moments before he's expected to speak." Her neck was tilted in the perfect angle to kiss, but he resisted, lest he not be able to stop.

"You've already missed it, but you can make it up later," she said, toying with the ribbons and medals on the breast of the jacket. "Besides, you have me as an excuse so that's like kind of license to do whatever the hell you want." She ran her hands along his arms as she deepened her voice to impersonate one of her many nameless critics. "Oooh, there's Unpredictable Pascal again, being totally never on time and doing what she wants whenever she wants to! Poor Hubert just got dragged along on the crazy ride!"

"Crazy or not, I can't complain about the ride." Her nearness, their earlier discussion, and the scent of the sopherias in her hair were conspiring against him. "And what does Predictably Unpredictable Pascal want to do right now?"

"What we usually do when we haven't seen each other for awhile," she said, reaching up to run a hand through his hair. "It's been like four weeks."

"Five weeks and two days," he corrected, letting his lips barely touch the tender skin of her cheek. "We should really get back, but I'll make it up to you later. You have my word."

She turned to face him, sliding her hand along his arm and jerking him towards her as she flopped onto the ground. "But I need something."

Pulled forward, he caught himself before falling, and gave her a smile as he pressed his glasses up his nose with his free hand. "And what do you need, Pascal?"

"You have to come closer to find out," she whispered, giving him a wink and still holding his wrist captive. "It's totally a secret."

Temptation was beckoning him, taunting him, as he glanced towards Lhant for just a moment as if staring down guilt itself. Finally giving in, he sat next to her amid the flower covered meadow and repeated the question he already knew the general answer to, but was eager to hear how she would say it this time. "What do you need, Pascal?"

She plucked a single sopheria from the ground and tucked it behind his ear before resting her forehead against his. "I need to totally flirt you out of your pants."

The direct, yet amusing answer encouraged him to ignore the nagging voice of responsibility and decency in the back of his head. Kissing her, he guided her to the ground, the last twinge of shame washed away by her fingers tangling into his hair. He relished every touch he gave, each kiss he received, every whimper he coaxed from her, and allowed himself to enjoy the wicked thrill of the mistake they were making.

In those moments he didn't care where he was supposed to be. He didn't care what responsibilities he had tossed aside. He didn't even care that his normally impeccable dress uniform coat was being wrinkled and stained by the grass underneath her. Hell, he didn't even care if they got caught.

When they returned to the reception, dessert was already being served. She quickly relinquished his coat, and he took his place at the table between his brother and Malik. Before he could answer Asbel's question of where had he been, Malik began tapping his glass with a knife to call the attention of the guests.

The crowd began to quiet and look to him and he reached into his pocket to find the paper that he had placed there earlier was gone.

"Damn it," he muttered.

"Missing something?" Malik asked, a big smirk on his face.

"My speech."

"Perhaps it's where you found those grass stains on your back, _Lieutenant_ ," the older man teased.

The guests had settled and were looking at him expectedly. It was then that he saw Pascal down front in the crowd, holding a piece of paper and shredding it with a maniacal grin on her face. Tossing it like confetti, she winked at him before running back—barefoot—her place at the far end of their table.

He drew a long breath collecting his thoughts, and praying the right words would come to him. "To those of us who have known Asbel and Cheria since they were children, I'm sure this day comes as no surprise. They were always together then, as they are now. Though, I hope Asbel has learned an important lesson over the years—when you come home from breaking the rules and hanging around on Lhant Hill with flowers in hand, be sure that you always give them to Cheria."

He turned to see his brother laughing at that memory from their childhood and it gave him the confidence to continue to improvise.

"We all know that both of them were ignorant of their feelings for each other for awhile, but I'm glad they figured it out because they are perfect for each other. In fact, I hope they keep a little bit of that ignorance because I believe the magic of first love is the innocence in knowing it will never end. And I know this one won't. They're both far too stubborn to give up, especially since they've come this far."

Raising his glass of wine, he turned to the two of them. "So, I ask that everyone join me in offering a toast to the two of you. May the saddest moment of your future be no worse than the happiest of your past."

There was actual applause and cheers as the happy couple touched their glasses and he felt himself smiling and enjoying the moment. Whatever he had just said seemed well received or instantly forgotten, but either way, it didn't matter. It actually felt good to work without a script or a plan for a change.

Later, as the guests were enjoying a little dancing and a bit too much liquor, Asbel walked up to him with two glasses of wine, offering one. "Who are you and what have you done with Hubert?"

"Enjoying your wedding, then?" He mused, accepting the drink.

"Where's Pascal?"

"Is anything on fire?"

Asbel's answer sounded more like a question. "I don't think so?"

"Then I have no idea."

Laughing, Asbel clasped him on the shoulder. "Seriously, my brother is never late for anything. I think he plans to plan and has a calendar for his calendar. And, I didn't expect such a touching toast."

"Oh, I'm just full of surprises these days," he said before taking a sip of the wine.

"I guess. Where did you go during dinner?"

He considered how to answer for a moment before supplying: "Pascal needed something."

"What did she need?"

"Don't ask questions you don't want the answers to."

"I want to know or I wouldn't be asking."

"Very well," he smirked, knowing that he would evoke an entertaining reaction with the answer. "She needed to take off my pants."

Asbel coughed, sputtering the mouthful of wine he had just sipped. "Oh for the love of cryas! You…c'mon…really…Hubert?!"

"She was quite insistent," he said, grinning as he raised his glass to his lips. "Who am I to deny the woman?"

"I can't believe this."

"For your bride's sake, I only hope that you may know such desperate desire."

"Don't say things like that. It's…creepy. Especially coming from you."

"Why?" he asked, taking pleasure in the good-natured distress he was causing. "I'm probably far better versed in such things than you. Cold desert nights, cramped quarters, long assignments away from home with people who were much older than I—let me just say the army was quite the learning experience."

Asbel cringed. "Just…forget it. I really don't want to think about my little brother like that." After another drink, he tilted his head. "But your Dad is okay with…well, Pascal?"

"If he were alive, somehow, I feel that our father would not care who either of us chose to spend our time with," he said, giving in to his habit of sliding his glasses up his nose. "However, if you are referring to Garrett Oswell, his opinion on the matter is of little concern to me."

"He seemed pretty excited at the thought of you marrying the President's daughter."

"He most certainly was, but once again, I fully disappointed him with no regrets," Hubert said with a smirk. "Contracted marriages may be common in Strahta, but there's no romance in them and the idea of selling off your children to strengthen your political influence disgusts me."

"And there's another thing I thought I'd never hear come out of your mouth."

"Hmm?"

"The word 'romance.'"

He shrugged. "But to answer your question, whatever disdain Garrett has for Pascal is thinly disguised in his desire to manipulate her."

"Manipulate her?"

"I think he wants to gain access to Amarcian technology for his own ends—either another ill fated coup or just the chance to sell it to the highest and most unscrupulous bidder. But his plan has a fatal flaw."

"You mean you?" Asbel asked.

"Hardly. I mean Pascal. That which cannot be predicated cannot be manipulated."

"Well, that's a good thing. I hope that no one in Strahta takes issue with her being…well… _her_?"

"Depending on who you talk to, it's either a scandal or a fairytale, but I don't give a damn either way," he said, taking another sip of the wine. "Actually, we have more trouble with some of the people in the Enclave. Some of them really do not like Outsiders and they aren't afraid to say it to her face. It upsets her greatly and there seems to be nothing I can do about it, even though I've told her dozens of times I don't care what they think of me."

"Outsiders? That's what they call us even after everything we went through?"

"In polite company and conversation. There are quite a few who don't trust us and don't agree with the cooperation they've shown Fendel." He gave a dark chuckle and shook his head. "The only time I've ever seen Pascal truly angry was when one of her fellow Amarcians referred to me as _poilacarié_."

"What does that mean?"

"The rough translation is 'filthy-solid-haired-son-of-a-bitch.'"

"Oh man. What did she do?"

"I'm still learning the language, but I believe she told him that if he didn't want her boot up his ass and the business end of her shotstaff at his throat, he better start running."

Asbel shook his head as he grinned. "Leave it to you to learn a-near-extinct language to impress your girlfriend. I guess this is serious. I'm sure Mom will be thrilled if she gets to plan another wedding."

He felt a gentle hand touch his shoulder and turned to see his mother standing there behind the two of them. "Boys, you are neglecting the guests. And Cheria is looking for you, Asbel."

"Amazing," Hubert said with a smile and a flippant wave of his hand. "You managed to summon Mother with the mere thought of the chance to repeat this fiasco."

She squeezed the two of them around the waists. "I would love to do so. I'm so happy for you both."

"Well, should the time come," he said, before finishing his glass. "I just hope you like beaches and bananas."

And now, three months after the wedding, here they were, once again having a meeting that wasn't planned. Somehow, some way, they'd both managed to be in the same town on the same day without any real warning. His orders had changed at the last minute, and so did her mind as to where she was going. So, through pure coincidence, they found themselves in the snow-covered town of Velanik and he was about to receive yet another lesson. This time, it was to be about trust, betrayal, and forgiveness.

She spotted him first. It would've been hard to miss him, dressed in his uniform and surrounded by four of his highest-ranking subordinates. She didn't hesitate to run up behind him and cover his eyes, shouting, "Guess who?!"

He laughed—out loud even—much to the shock of his officers. These men knew him well and never before had they seen him break decorum. The quizzical and amused glances they shared with each other told of their entertainment at the interruption and, more so, his response of rattling off names of people they both knew.

Finally, after an exhaustive list of names followed by her constant response of: "Nope! Try again!" He brought the charade to a close with, "By simple process of elimination, then it must be Pascal."

"Elimination?" she teased, looking at the other soldiers. "I think you just ran out of names."

"Or patience," he replied, though his tone was gentle as he took her hands and pulled her around to face him.

His men quickly found things to busy themselves with, giving sharp salutes before making themselves scarce.

When he was alone with her, the pleasantries were exchanged; the hellos, what are you doing heres, and it's been awhiles. Before the conversation could deviate from the requisite to the important, she gave him a hug. "How long you here for?"

"We're supposed to leave in a few hours."

"Awesome," she said, giving him a wink. "I'll be at the inn."

Minutes later found him making excuses to his officers and giving them orders to continue packing up the camp. It wasn't really selfish, he reasoned. He had already done his work and these men could certainly handle supervising the small vanguard they'd brought. Besides, he hadn't seen her in six weeks and she was supposed to bring him some new information on the steam system in Fendel. It wasn't wrong. I couldn't be wrong. Could it?

He ignored the nagging voice in the back of his mind, and when he finally had her in his arms, she asked, "How did you get away?"

"I told them I had to review some of your research."

She laughed, touching a finger to his nose. "That kind of sounds really dirty when you think about it."

"I guess, but it is mostly true," he answered, pulling her close. "I've missed you so much."

"Yeah, I missed you, too. Sorry that I missed that ball thing."

Kissing her cheek, he whispered, "Someday you'll have to come to one. I think you're just avoiding it."

"Like I want to go to some fancy-schmancy party where all the pretty-pretty Strahtan girls are all over you," she said, before raising her voice an octave. "Oh, Hubert! Check out my ginormous—" she paused, sticking out her chest. "Dowry!"

He laughed. "That is _annoyingly_ accurate."

"See, that's why I don't want to go," she said, playfully unfastening the buckles of his jacket. "I'd totally cause a scene and get you in trouble or get my butt arrested or something."

He shook his coat off and then placed a finger to her lips. "I could be persuaded to pay your bail if that were to happen. Besides, those women bore me. They have no aspirations of their own save to find a man to provide them a life of luxury."

"Do I bore you?" she asked, trying to bite his finger.

Lifting her chin, he smiled down at her. "I don't think you could if you even tried."

He kissed her then, relishing these moments that seemed to come less often these days. The guilt he'd felt earlier dissipated at her touch. He deserved this he told himself. He deserved a few moments alone with her, a few moments to hold her and forget all of his responsibilities.

She slid his shirt off his shoulders, and nipped at his neck, raking her teeth teasingly along his collarbone. She had never really asserted herself like before, pulling on his belt and drawing him along with her. Normally she'd let him lead, but this change was refreshing, hell, it was arousing. Control wasn't something he usually relinquished willingly, but he trusted her so much, that he made the exception.

Content to play along with this new game, he didn't resist when she shoved him backwards onto the bed and then removed all of her own clothes, tossing them over her shoulder into a messy little pile. Crawling up next to him, she straddled him, kissing her way along his bare chest before freeing him of his boots and pants. He shivered, visibly even, as her breath warmed him and her hands wandered teasingly along his sides, each flick of a fingertip making way for the next electrifying touch.

He reached towards her, to run his fingers through her hair and pull her close for a kiss, but she suddenly captured his hands and straightened herself up. Deliberately, methodically, she guided them to the simple metallic headboard and closed each finger around it with annoying precision before kissing each of his closed fists. With a grin, she met his gaze. "If you let go, I'll stop."

At those unexpected words, he _fully_ surrendered to her, feeling incredibly liberated as he did so. He decided to let her do whatever she wanted to him, allowing the most banal instincts just take over as he just lay there, completely at her mercy.

With a wink, she snatched his glasses off his face and put them on, wearing them as a headband in her hair. Grinning as she checked that his hands were still securely gripped on the headboard, she gave his shoulder a few bites before demanding a breathless kiss. He felt her jerk his shorts down just enough before planting her hands on his chest. Taking him quickly, ruthlessly, deeply, she didn't bother to try and make it last long at all.

And, for that he was grateful.  
Because he knew he wouldn't be able to.  
Not like _this_.

When it was over, she collapsed on top of him, fighting to catch her breath. Only then did he take his hands from the headboard and delicately place them around her waist. Kissing her forehead and landing another on her cheek, he searched his extensive vocabulary for the right words, but only managed, "That was intense."

"Yeah," she said, slowly rolling off of him to curl up against his shoulder. "My legs are still all tingly and shaky."

"I don't think I've ever felt that close to you before," he whispered, taking his glasses back. He desperately wanted to be able to see her face more clearly in that moment.

She pulled the covers over them and cuddled up against him. "Yeah. Wow. I think I'm just gonna stay here for awhile."

He had no objections to that despite the fact he knew he would have to leave soon. "What brought that on?"

She toyed with a few strands of his hair. "Sometimes a man who is powerful in everyday life needs to feel powerless."

His brow furrowed. That certainly wasn't something she would've ever come up with, and the way she spoke it sounded like she was quoting someone or something she read. It made him curious. "Where did you hear that?"

There were answers he expected to hear. Fourier. Captain Malik. Even Richard. But what she said was so unexpected, so wrong, he had to ask her to repeat it.

"I said _your mom_."

Her confirmation of the words caused him to pull away from her, jump out of bed, and hastily cover himself with his coat. He'd never felt exposed around her before but that had managed to change in the span of a simple sentence. "What the hell!? What the hell were you doing talking to my mother about…us?! About what we do?!"

"Because she's like the coolest mom ever!"

"She's still my mother! And I don't need her knowing what we—"

"She knows we sleep together," she answered, still completely oblivious to just how wrong a thing it was to say, and at that moment of all times. Laughing as she rolled up in a sheet, she teased, "and now all of Velanik probably does, too! You were like totally loud. It was awesome."

"That isn't helping!"

"Well, what do you want me to say?"

"Get dressed," he said, tossing her clothes to her. "Nothing. Please. Say nothing."

She seemed genuinely confused and it infuriated him. "Why?"

"Do you not see how inappropriate that is?" he asked, looking around for his slacks and quickly putting them on. "To talk to my mother about our most intimate moments?"

"It wasn't like I spilled all of the juicy bits! Cheria and I were talking about the wedding and how much fun it was and how you missed making the toast on time and how it was my fault—"

"Another mistake you convinced me to make," he snapped, sitting down to pull on his boots.

"You weren't exactly complaining at the time," she laughed, pulling on her pants as she lay on the bed, kicking her legs in the air for good measure. "I think it was more like 'Ooohh…Paasscaaaallll…I looooove yoooou soooo muuuuuch….'"

He glared at her. "Don't do that."

"What?"

"Imitate me, especially…" he paused, the flush on his face burning even more. "Just don't imitate me."

"It was awesome then. You can't deny it was awesome. Probably cuz we hadn't seen each other in weeks!" She barely took a breath as she quickly finished dressing.

He glowered at her, but she didn't even notice.

"Anyway, I think Cheria is kind of like jealous about stuff like that and that's how we started talking. I guess since she's kind of around Asbel all the time it's…well, _boring_. But since we never see each other, when we do, we just want to rip each other's clothes off and bwah-ahh-ah!"

He pulled his shirt on with a sigh. "A touching and yet disturbing thought. And yet you still fail to see how inappropriate this is?"

"Aww…it was just a little girl talk."

"That involved my _mother_ ," he reiterated.

She jumped up off the bed. "Well, she _is_ a girl."

"I am aware of that fact!"

"Wow, you're still angry? I mean, the whole conversation wasn't about _you_."

"Oh, that makes me feel so much better!"

She laughed, giving a little twirl before sitting down to put her shoes back on. "I mean, the way Cheria said it, I guess Asbel kind of like needs a roadmap or something…"

"I really, _really_ don't want to hear specifics about my brother's bedroom exploits."

She shrugged. "Come on, it was just wine and talk. Lots of wine, little bit of talk, oh, and soda for Sophie."

"Sophie is a child! She shouldn't be privy to such discussions!"

"She's gotta learn sometime," she said with a shrug and a chuckle. "I mean, she used to think that men had babies. Cheria totally had to set her straight on that."

"Set her straight while drinking with you, Cheria, and my mother. Brilliant. I'm sure she was formally educated in that setting."

"Oh, chill out. We didn't let Sophie drink."

"That's what you're taking away from this?" he asked, shaking his head at how incredulous the conversation had become. "That's what you think I'm so upset about!? Do you not see that I can't go home now! I can't show my face in Lhant ever again! I can't look at my mother or sister-in-law or niece without them knowing things they absolutely do not need to know about me!"

"I think you're being a liiiiittle dramatic."

"Hardly," he growled, as he pulled on his coat and buckled it

"C'mon, your mom is cool. I would've never known that putting your hands on the headboard trick if she hadn't told me." And then, as if the conversation couldn't get any more uncomfortable, she decided to add: "Apparently your dad was into that kind of thing, too. Except from what your mom said, he totally liked it a whole lot rougher."

He felt his stomach flip at that revelation and clasped his hand over his mouth. "I need to vomit."

"Why? Maybe it's hereditary or something?" she said, touching a finger to her chin in thought as if this was an actual hypothesis worth investigating. "I should like ask Fourier since she's all about biology and stuff."

"STOP!" he shouted at her. "This isn't funny! It's not amusing! It's not something that you can talk about as if you're telling me the weather! And it's certainly not something you should consider research worthy!"

"You're really mad?" she asked, _finally_ coming to the realization.

"The hell I'm mad!"

She actually looked contrite. "Why? I didn't say anything bad about you."

"I repeat for your benefit: it is completely inappropriate to discuss what we do when we're alone with other people—especially my mother!"

A long silence held as he moved to the mirror, pulled a comb from his jacket pocket and fixed his hair.

"I thought you liked what I did." She said quietly, coming up behind him and talking to his reflection.

"Don't you get it? I did! I liked it a lot!" He spun around to face her. "But you ruined it the instant you told me that you received directions from my mother! Did she also suggest other positions we should try? Or perhaps locations? I so would like to know exactly where and how I was conceived!"

"She didn't say," she answered, making a puzzled face. "But I can ask if you want."

"That was sarcasm!" he shouted, grabbing her shoulders and giving her a gentle shake as if to bring her to senses. "How can you be so smart and yet so stupid at the same time, Pascal?"

He'd never called her stupid before and the shock on her face showed it. Eccentric. Silly. Amusing. Insufferable. Maybe even crazy. But _never_ stupid.

She stepped back from him and bit her lip. "I'm sorry."

He was so tired of hearing it, so tired of spending countless nights wondering if she was ever going to return, so tired of the excuses. As much as he cared for her, he unloaded, firing a fast, clipped, barrage of words that were streaked with as much anger as pain. "You're always sorry! You're sorry for never visiting! You're sorry for never showing up to any of the state functions I beg you to attend with me! You're sorry for saying the most inappropriate things at the most inappropriate times! You're sorry you forgot how many days you spent in some new ruins! You're sorry you didn't bother to send me a message because some discovery you made distracted you!"

She looked at him, her eyes glassy, and just repeated herself. "I'm really, really sorry."

They stared at each other for what seemed like eons before he shook his head and lowered his voice, but the words were still harsh. "You know what, Pascal? I'm sorry, too. I'm sorry I put up with this crap for so long! I'm sorry I want more out of this relationship than just seeing each other once a month and sweating up the sheets in some inn! I'm sorry I've spent the last two years of my life worrying if and when you were going to come back to me! I'm sorry that I love you so much that I would give my own life for you!"

He was turning to leave, when she grabbed his hand. "Wait."

"What is it now?" he asked, sliding his glasses up the bridge of his nose and his voice finding that arrogance he'd worked so hard to lose, especially around her. "Are you going to tell me that you betrayed my trust further and discussed more of our personal business with more of our mutual friends? I'm sure Malik and Richard would be amused—if not delighted—to hear it in nauseating detail."

"No," she said, tugging on his arm and trying to force him to look her in the eye. "I know I screwed up. I mean, I didn't at first, but now I know how mad this made you and I'm really sorry. I guess, I just wanted to make you happy and then we had promised no secrets so I-"

He tensed at her touch, but didn't pull away. "This is definitely something that would be the exception to the rule! Especially given the tenuous relationship I am striving to rebuild with my mother!"

"But y'know, she wants you to be happy, and I want to make you happy," she said, tilting her head back and forth. "So…it was all well intended, y'know?"

"I'm sure you both had my best interests at heart," he grumbled, frowning as he freed his arm from her grasp. Walking towards the door, he felt his heart sinking into his stomach. It killed him to leave her like _this_ , but it was honestly the last straw. He could put up with her unpredictable nature and her inability to follow any sort of plan. He could stand the outrageous things that came out of her mouth. He could even tolerate the inane nicknames she called him.

But not this.

This was a complete violation of his trust and in the worst way possible. Glancing over his shoulder, he gave her a tepid farewell. "My men are waiting. Good luck with your research, discoveries, and whatever it is that you do."

She called to him, the words straining in her throat as tears slipped down her cheeks. "For what it's worth, _you_ were my greatest discovery, Hu."

That stopped him in his tracks. He turned slowly and stared at her, knowing now he couldn't walk away from her. Not when she had said something so beautiful, so romantic, so sincere—the perfect declaration of her feelings for him. His breath caught in his chest as he walked back to her. Pulling her into a firm embrace, and feeling his throat tightening with emotion, he whispered her name, unable to find any other words that he needed in that instant.

Resting her head on his chest, she traced the embroidery of his uniform jacket with a finger. "It's true. Ruins are fun. Building stuff is even better. I could kachunk-a-chunk all day making some weird little gadget and it makes me feel useful. But when I'm with you, I feel happy. I don't feel so alone in the world. I know that some people say I'm out of touch with reality or that I'm insane. And y'know, sometimes I forget things. Where I am, where I'm going, when I last bathed, when I last ate, and even what I was thinking about. Totally unimportant things!" She looked up at him and gave a smile. "But I'm certain about one thing. As along as I'm around you, I'm not insane. Because as crazy as this sounds, especially with you being so you and me being so me, we are the only people who really understand each other."

He smiled at her and summoned all of his courage, hoping she understood exactly what he was asking. "Come back with to Strahta with me, then. You're the one thing that keeps me sane and I don't want to be away from you for another day."

"Really? Even after I royally screwed up?"

"Yes," he sighed, touching a finger to her cheek. "My mother told me something once, too. Perfect love allows for all of our failings. We have to learn to forgive and forget because life's too short to be angry all the damn time."

"She's a smart lady. And I'm really, totally, sorry."

"I am sorry, too. You didn't deserve my anger. You never deserve it," he whispered. Then, he repeated his earlier question, just to make sure he heard the blissful answer again. "So you'll come home with me?"

"Yeah, of course," she said with a grin. A big, wonderful, ridiculous grin. "But I need to run out and get some supplies first."

"My vanguard is supposed to leave within the hour."

She gave him a quick kiss. "I'll be right back. I promise."

He waited.

An hour passed.  
Two.  
Half a day.

But she never returned.


	2. Order

"I fail to see the problem here," the president said, tenting his fingers under his chin.

"Sir," Hubert began, holding a firm stance of attention from across the desk. "I believe my actions were unprofessional at best and tantamount to desertion at worst. I fully expect at least a reprimand if not a court marital and demotion in rank."

Paradine shook his head and didn't bother to hide the grin on his lips. "You want me to _punish_ you?"

"It is the only appropriate action, sir."

"Let me ask you this: was your mission accomplished?"

"Yes, sir." He frowned, still desperately wanting some validation that what he did was wrong and that life would be better without Chaos. "We retrieved the stratheme horns that the scientists in Sable Izolle required with ease."

"And none of your men were hurt?"

"Aside from one who claims he was attacked by an animal while standing watch at the camp, no."

"Your report stated that he was treated with gels and healing artes?"

"Yes, sir."

"You accomplished the mission without a single casualty, so what is the problem, Lieutenant?"

Drawing a long breath, he gave the answer in a clipped tone. "I left my men for personal reasons that should never trump my duty to my country. I held the vanguard in that town for an extra six hours due to my selfish actions. They were not pleased with the delay and there's no doubt in my mind that those men have absolutely no faith in my ability to lead. Not to mention, I was late arriving to the transport ship in Zavhert."

He could hear the smile on the president's words. "These personal reasons wouldn't happen to be a certain Amarcian scientist who has held your attention for the past few years, would they?"

"Sir, I respectfully decline to answer that question." Clenching his fists at his sides, he just wished the man would strip him of his rank and cast him out of the country. It was a fitting punishment, he reasoned.

"I think you just did," Paradine replied with a laugh.

Hubert shook his head and frowned.

Paradine stood up, stepped around the desk, and clasped him on the shoulder. "We all make mistakes. Consider this one worthy of a pardon with my full authority."

"I don't deserve this, sir."

"Yes, you do. After all you've done for this country—and our world—I think I can forgive you for spending a few hours with your girlfriend."

"She's not my girlfriend." His eyes narrowed. The words tasted wrong, but he said them anyway.

"Ah," the president teased. "Well, whatever you young people are calling it these days. I admit I was saddened when you turned down the offer to marry into my family, but as I told you then, I do understand. Pascal is a remarkable young woman."

"I care not for her, sir. I also respectfully request that I be removed from any missions involving the Amarcian Enclave."

"I see," Paradine said with a shake of his head. "That's too bad. I was so glad to finally see the Child Who Never Smiles laughing the last time Pascal was in town."

"Am I dismissed, sir?" He asked, quite irritated that the president used the title the instructors at the military academy had given him all those years ago.

The president returned to his seat behind his desk and leaned back in his chair. "In a moment. I consider us friends, Hubert. I've known of you since your days at the Academy. When I finally met you after your graduation, I was pleased to see that a member of the Oswell family had finally earned his success rather than purchased it. So I'm going to give you a little unsolicited advice."

"You don't need to do that, sir."

"Consider it your punishment."

"Very well," Hubert said from behind clenched teeth.

"When you graduated, I personally had some qualms about giving such a rank to someone who was only shaving once a week. But you proved me wrong in that regard. You possess wisdom beyond your years, an intellect to rival our best scientists, and a talent for crafting military strategies. You are truly an asset to this country. But Hubert, if you can't see that girl was the best thing that ever happened to you, then you are an idiot."

He listened, but in the end simply took his leave and marched out of the Presidential Palace cursing under his breath. Paradine's words did nothing but rub salt into the wound. This had to be the end. He couldn't afford to have his principles and judgment clouded by her again. It was one thing to sneak off from his brother's wedding to give into his pathetic lustful desires. It was quite another to disrupt—and possibly compromise—a military operation for it.

He had allowed Chaos to break down his guard, compromise his principles, and destroy his decision-making paradigm.

And that would be the last time he permitted it to happen.

On the ship back to Yu Liberte, he had decided it would be easiest to hate her. He hated how she had promised to come with him, to live with him, to marry him, only to lie and never return. He hated how she had left him standing there, waiting hours on end, worrying something had happened. He hated how he had searched that town nearly door-to-door looking for her, asking if anyone had seen her, only to learn no, they hadn't. He hated how he had made up every excuse he possibly could think of to delay his vanguard's departure. He hated the snickers he had heard behind his back from his men as they joked about "waiting on research."

Most of all, he hated how he fell for her words, her damn words, chosen like sharpened weapons to take out his defenses.

Damn her and the tactics she played against him.

True, he loved her.  
But he couldn't tolerate this any longer.  
It was just a set up for failure, for disappointment, for heartbreak.

Chaos and Order would never find middle ground.  
So this would be the end.  
Period.

Upon returning home from the meeting with the president, he instructed the staff to box up all of her things. Most were the guest room, since that's where his father had insisted she stay on those rare occasions she came into town.

She had a terrible habit of leaving junk everywhere. A broken gear in a drawer, a shirt under the bed, sketches of her latest delusion in his closet…all little reminders, little droppings, now little good-byes he didn't want to look at.

When that was complete, he sent her one final message: _come get your belongings by the end of the month or I will dispose of them._

Then, he slammed the communicator to the ground and stomped on it. He made sure the little parts of it were ground into the cobblestones of the street with the heel of his boot. Picking them up, he tossed them into the canal behind his house.

Everything was back to the way it was before Chaos.

He wouldn't be distracted by thoughts of her, the way she smelled or the way she'd wear his shirts. He wouldn't be enticed into misbehaving or tossing responsibility aside. He didn't have to worry about when she was coming to visit. He didn't have to wonder if she was passed out in some damn ruin from exhaustion. He didn't have to carry that stupid communicator with him. Hell, he didn't have to surrender his every thought to her.

And he told himself that he liked that.  
Even if he didn't believe it.

A week passed, and he was assigned a new mission to visit with King Richard in Barona. He thought about stopping by Lhant on the way, but remembered that Chaos had ruined that for him, too. Damn her. There was no way he could face his mother, or Cheria, or Sophie. Not now, and probably not ever again. Since, thanks to Chaos, some of his most personal habits had become fodder for their amusement.

Resigned to just make the trip as assigned, he actually looked forward to leaving Strahta for a few days, especially given the weather. The desert country only had three seasons—hot, hell, and sandstorm—and he despised that last one they were currently suffering through. Between the president's unwanted forgiveness, his father's glee upon learning that he was single again, and the damn dust blowing around, it would be a nice break.

But the night before he was to leave for Windor, something happened that shuffled his plans and disrupted his Order.

Garrett Oswell was murdered.

Killed on his way back from some shady business deal at the port, the news didn't come as much of a shock to Hubert. His adoptive father had lived a lifestyle that brought him many enemies and this time one just got the upper hand on him.

He planned the requisite funeral for the following day, despite the threat of an impending sandstorm. It was best to just get it over with and find some kind of closure. Still, he didn't bother to tell his other family. This wasn't their problem and he didn't want to visit it upon them. The only people he expected to attend were members of the Oswell family, and many of them managed to find excuses not to be there.

He was surprised then, when a good number of people arrived at the location in the desert where the funeral pyre had been built. He didn't know half of them, and the way they talked, it seemed that they thought they were at a cocktail party. They were milling around, sharing stories, and laughing. Some came up to him, put an arm around his back and told him how "terribly sorry" they were. Others pretended to know him despite him not having ever recalled seeing their faces before. One woman who claimed to be a relative even pinched his cheek as she said, "my, Hubert, you've certainly grown into your shoulders!"

It was all terribly fake, thinly crafted concern and grief woven behind passive-aggressive compliments and attempts to elicit information from him. Would he be staying in the military? Wasn't he Garrett's sole heir? Didn't that make him one of the richest men in Strahta? Was he going to take a bride? Did he have ambitions on the Presidency? The business might suffer without someone to run it, had he considered that? Didn't he know it would still be a service to his country, were he to decide to leave the military to run it?

For two hours he tolerated this charade. Each minute passed slower than the last, and he just wanted it to be over. None of these people cared for Garrett nor did they care for him. They cared about themselves and their wallets and the ties their businesses had with Garrett's. They wanted information, not closure.

It was revolting.

He watched the crowd with utmost disgust, not even bothering to hide the scowl on his face. The small parade of false grief winding in front of the oil-drenched wooden platform that held his father's body was one of the worst. Some even made jokes as they passed by. True, Garrett may not have been popular and his morals may have been warped, but surely he deserved at least something better than _this?_

Finally it was time to light the pyre, to send Garrett off to whatever afterlife he had earned. The crowd had thinned considerably, and the few people that were left stood in respectful silence as the kindling was lit.

Stepping back, he watched it burn, the rank odor of the oil soaked hay causing him to cover his nose. He stood there, watching as the flames began to eat away at the ghastly structure and he tried to feel something for Garrett. This was the man who took him in when his family threw him away. This was the man who encouraged him to excel in the military academy so he could earn a respectable rank. This was the man who suggested he take the assignment in Lhant, if for no other reason to show his family what they had lost.

That may have been misguided, but it was something, wasn't it?

He watched the flames flicker and climb the hastily built structure. They consumed the pyre as if the fire was trying to absolve the sins of the shrouded figure atop it. It burned tall and bright, probably visible from the capital, like a beacon beckoning the spirits to take Garrett away. Hubert stayed there long after everyone else had left. Though the stench became nearly unbearable and some of the ashes and soot fell into his hair, he remained, the lone mourner on the sand, well into the night.

Still trying to feel something, anything.  
For the man he had called Father for the better part of a decade.  
But he couldn't.

And that _terrified_ him.

Was he destined to become another man like Garrett? Someone so cold and unfeeling that his funeral was nothing more than a pathetic farce not even attended by family but by those seeking to close business deals? A man so despised, so soulless and evil, that even his own son couldn't feel grief over his passing?

It scared him so much that he went back to the manor and gave his staff the order that he was not to be disturbed, no matter what. Into the library he went, shaking off his dress uniform coat, and unceremoniously tossing it over the chair at his desk. Collapsing onto the large leather sofa in the middle of the room, he tried again to find something, anything, to feel for Garrett.

The library was his favorite room in the entire house. If he could think clearly anywhere, it would be here. The walls were lined with books, all carefully catalogued and organized into perfect little legions standing at attention. Imported dark-stained wood that made up the cases and his desk toned the room warm and the plush leather furniture—the sofa and two huge chairs—made it inviting.

Normally, that was.

Right now, it felt more like the house itself was judging him for being an atrocious excuse for a son. It was as if those cases of books were glaring at him, and the sofa was so disgusted with him that it wanted to shake him off.

The light from the single stained glass window that consumed most of the far wall brought colors that played on the carpet, changing like a kaleidoscope depending upon the time of day.

Right now, they were making angry shards of reds and oranges at his feet.

Standing up, he stalked over to the corner of the room. The door there led to his father's private study. In the ten years he had lived here, he had been forbidden to ever enter. He tried the knob, but it was locked. With a grunt of frustration smoldering with terror, he kicked open the door.

If Garrett Oswell had a soul, perhaps it was hiding in here, kept secret like many of his sketchy business deals.

The room was small and cluttered, housing only a large desk with a chair, a painting of a stag hung on the wall behind it, two bookcases framing the artwork, and three carefully placed filing cabinets.

He started with the files. If his father was anything, he was meticulous. The fear began to turn to dread as he picked through them and realized they contained nothing but business papers. Garrett was careful to keep his transactions—both legitimate and otherwise—memorialized in writing. As he scanned over them, he decided they were useless and tossed them over his shoulder.

When the files were empty and the pile on the floor nearly to his knees, he kicked the papers like fallen leaves and turned his attention to the bookcases.

There were two ugly vases that Garrett had probably paid small fortunes for on the top shelves. The first one he carefully took down and examined in the off chance there would be something inside. When there wasn't, he dropped it to the ground, smashing it. The second one fared the same and the books became the next set of casualties. His hands trembled as he desperately plucked them from the shelves. Shaking out the pages of each one, he wished something would fall from within. Anything. A shred of paper. A slice of hope.

Nothing. There was nothing.

When all the books were on the floor, he went to the desk. The drawers were locked, and no matter how hard he tugged on them, they wouldn't budge. With a rush of terror-driven adrenaline, he flipped the enormous desk over and tried to kick the locks out but they were too stubborn. Feeling that fear begin to become a rush of welcome anger, he screamed at it, as if his voice would destroy the stubborn pieces of metal.

They didn't break, but he found comfort in the rage. Hands sweating and heart racing, he knew he had to get into that damn locked desk.

Cynthia, one of the maids, opened the door to the library and called to him, "Master Hubert? Are you all right?"

"If you value your employment you will leave at once!" He growled in response.

"Forgive me, sir," came the quick answer before he heard the door click closed.

Despite the interruption, he continued his mission. A weapon would be necessary for this operation. Striding out of the library, he nearly took the door off its hinges as he slammed it open. With a scowl on his face and the rage quickly bordering on irrationality, he raced up the stairs to his room and grabbed one of his pistols.

The butler caught him at the top of the stairs and looked at the weapon with wide eyes. "Young Master…please…don't do anything rash."

"Shut up," Hubert snapped. "This doesn't concern you."

It was a heartfelt question that came from the portly old man. "Sir, is there anything I can do?"

"Leave me alone and make sure no one—and I mean absolutely no one—disturbs me."

"Sir, your father wouldn't have wanted you to—"

"I'm only using it to break a lock, you idiot." He looked down at the gun in his hand and found that arrogance in his voice he'd heard Garrett use with the staff. He had always hated that, but it came from his mouth now. "Remember your place."

"Of course, Young Master," the man said giving a slight bow, clearly relieved. "If you desire anything, Cynthia and I will make ourselves available for the rest of the evening."

A thank you would've been appropriate to this offer of kindness, but he just grunted. There was a mission on the table and the stakes were high. It was not time to be cordial.

Bursting back into the library and then the study, he aimed the pistol at the lock on the drawer, feeling the rush of eleth come from within as it fired. It was the first thing he'd felt all day besides fear and panic and anger and rage.

It felt _good._

He fired two more shots, one at each of the drawers on the desk, each one hitting their mark with the accuracy he was known so well for.

Now no longer hindered by those damn locks, he set the pistol on the filing cabinet and jerked the drawers from their slides. The top two contained just more business papers that he carelessly threw to the ground. The bottom one had only a single sheet of paper.

It had to be a puzzle.

He frowned, long and dark, as he read over the series of five numbers _11, 03, 20, 09, 18_ and the phrase _"that which is most precious"_ which had been penned in Garrett's annoying left-leaning handwriting. It had to be important to be kept in a drawer all by itself. Another growl came from his lips. It would be just like Garrett to leave him something like this—something that could mean everything or could mean nothing at all. If he could solve the ridiculous cipher, that was.

Walking back out to the library, he looked at the library cases. Perhaps the numbers corresponded to a book? Starting from the north wall, he counted to the eleventh case, the third shelf, the twentieth book, the ninth page, and even down to the eighteenth word. Light.

Deciding that was useless, he tossed the book to the floor and then repeated the ritual, going from the south wall. The west wall, the east wall, and then counted from the bottom shelves up three rather than down from the top. He tried the sequence backwards, but all he garnered were random words that made no sense at all. It was pointless.

Garrett had won.

Still full of wrath, still panicked, and now hungry and out of patience, he began tearing the books from the shelves, creating piles of hatred and self-loathing. The perfectionist in him wouldn't let him stop, and he kept pulling those innocent books out of their homes and throwing them to the ground. Screaming at times, and kicking the cases when he felt they were fighting him, he ripped every single book down.

He wasn't going to take the disdain from this room.  
If the library wanted to hate him for not being able to care about Garrett, so be it.  
He'd show the library.

He'd show _Garrett._

He wasn't sure how much time had passed but the moonlight from the stained glass window had changed to a different angle and he could smell the food his staff had dutifully left on a tray outside of the door.

He didn't bother to get it.

He didn't deserve anything. He couldn't feel anything besides the anger. And he decided to relish in it.

At some point when all of those damn books were off their shelves, he slid down to the floor in front of the sofa and rested his back against it. He didn't want to sit on that damn sofa. It probably hated him as much as the wretched books.

Exhaustion just overtook his body and sleep came to him.  
So he lay there, propped up against the front of the couch, in the mess he made.

The sleep was completely dreamless.  
But when he awoke, the first thing the noticed was a familiar warmth.

The blanket that normally lived on his bed now lovingly covered him from chest to toes. Opening his eyes, the world was blurry, and a touch to his unshaven face said that his glasses were missing. He felt something metal in his right palm, and thought perhaps maybe he had remembered to take them off. Slowly opening his hand, he saw a small charm.

It was one he knew well.  
It belonged to Chaos.

He'd given it to her this past year on her birthday. She never was one for jewelry, so he designed this odd little charm in the shape of a gear and had it strung on a leather strap. It was solid platinum with a blue cryas set in the center that seemed to shift from navy to royal and back. Engraved into the front of it was a promise written in Amarcian, _"Nous trouverons un moyens ou nour ferons un"_ which translated to: "we'll find a way or make one."

On the back was simply "To Pascal. Happy Birthday. All my love, Hu."

Anger flooded him. How dare she have the nerve to show up now? And where was she? His eyes narrowed as he looked around the library, but everything was bleary and dark in the low, predawn light.

A voice called from behind, "rise and shine, sleepyhead."

He turned to see her blurry form at the stacks behind the couch, reaching towards the shelves.

"Your glasses are on the coffee table."

He fumbled to find them and she laughed, "to the left. No, your _other_ left."

He tried to remind himself that he hated that laugh as he put his glasses back on. Turning to see her, he saw that she had replaced most of the books that belonged on the far wall. All of them, except the ones on the two top shelves she couldn't reach.

She had been here all night, awake, then.  
Watching over him.

But he had to remember that he hated her. She wasn't going to fool him again with beautiful words and promises. She wasn't going to just laugh off a social faux pas or remind him that everyone makes mistakes.

There were dozens of things he wanted to say to her. _How are you? Where have you been? I missed you. Thank you for being here. I need you. There's something wrong with me. I'm scared. I can't feel anything for Garrett. I'm terrified at the kind of person I've become. I need you more than anything right now._

But all that came out of his mouth was that authoritative arrogance that he used to know so well. "Apparently my idiot servants cannot follow simple instructions. I said no visitors. That means you."

"Eh, don't be mad at Cynthia," she said as she replaced another book on the shelf. "She really didn't want to let me in, but I totally convinced her."

"And what did you tell her?" he asked, his tone becoming more and more aggravated with each word. "How concerned you were for me? You weren't so concerned when you _abandoned_ me in Velanik!"

She moved closer and leaned over him, grinning that ridiculous, wondrous grin. He was supposed to hate that, he reminded himself. "I told her I was pregnant with your kid and had no place to go and there was a sandstorm coming and I was totally scared."

The noise he made in response wasn't even close to a word or even a recognizable sound. He swore his heart stopped in his chest for just a moment as that shriek of surprise and shock came from his lips. Rubbing his forehead, he tried to press the flood of thoughts that rushed to his mind back into some kind of logical order.

She laughed. "Oh, _relax._ It was a total lie. But it worked!"

"Get out of my house," he hissed from behind clenched teeth, admittedly a bit relieved at that revelation. Though, the idea wasn't completely unpleasant to him, just…not right now. Besides, he had to remember that he _hated_ her.

"Jeez, was it something I said?" she asked, sliding down to sit next to him on the floor, clearly undeterred by his anger.

He looked her over and noticed she appeared rougher than usual. Her hair was caked full of sand, her precious scarf was missing, and the sleeves of her shirt had been crudely ripped off, turning it into a vest of sorts. "Aside from the lie you told my maid and just nearly gave me a heart attack with? Very well, let's start with… _'I'll be right back'_?"

"Yeah, well, something came up," she said, trying to take his hand. "But I'm not leaving. Not when you're like this. Be as mad as you want at me, but you shouldn't be alone right now. So I'm not gonna to let you be alone."

He pulled away. "You left me. I asked you to come home with me, to marry me, and you left me. You lied to me."

"Y'know, it's not important right now but you didn't say marry you. You said 'come to Strahta.' Well, I'm here. Nine days late, but I'm here."

"I figured it was implied."

"Yeah, I don't think you're supposed to imply something like that. But anyway, that's not important right now."

"The hell it is," he said, crossing his arms over his chest. "I want to know what was so pressing that you left me."

"Fine," she said, counting the bits of the story off on her fingers. "I fixed a furnace for a family. I bought supplies. Some bad stuff happened that really doesn't matter. I figured I'd catch up with you here but it took longer than I thought. That's the short version and it's totally not important right now."

"Bad stuff?" he could only imagine what constituted bad stuff in her mind. Probably a lack of banana pies or a broken machine that she didn't have the proper tool to fix.

"Forget it," she said, shaking her head. "I'm really sorry about your dad."

"Don't be. It's his own damn fault he's dead. If he hadn't been dealing with shady characters he wouldn't have been double-crossed." He glowered at her, narrowing his eyes. "So you can leave now. Go, and don't come back."

"No. I said I'm not leaving you alone while you're like this and I mean it. Hate me, fight me, whatever you wanna do. But I'm staying right here."

It was getting harder to hate her by the minute. "I boxed up all of that crap you left in the guest room. I want it out of my house."

She ignored him. "I wish I had been just a day earlier. I wanted to be at the funeral."

"Why would you come? You barely knew him. He only tolerated you because he thought he could use you. He called you all kinds of names behind my back."

"Like 'biggest mistake my son made'? Yeah, I heard that from him once. So what?" She leaned on his shoulder, just a little. "Anyway, I wouldn't have been there for him. I'm here for you."

"I don't need you." That was wounded pride talking and he knew it. But he said it anyway. "Besides, what makes you think you have the ability to counsel me on anything?"

She closed her eyes in thought before snapping her fingers as an answer came to her. "I've seen you naked."

"This isn't funny or amusing. I don't need you and your ridiculous antics. So _go_."

"You need someone and I'm all you got right now," she said before gesturing to the mess around them. "Because this totally isn't you."

He closed his eyes. "You think you know me. You don't."

"But I do, Hu. I know you so well that it hurts to see you like this." She paused, touching his shoulder and brushing one of those damned fingers through his hair. "That's why I'm scared. I'm worried about you. When I came in here last night and saw you looking like hell and the room so yeeesh…I was afraid."

"You don't owe me anything, much less concern. Would you please just leave?"

"No, I won't until I know you're okay. And you're totally not okay right now."

He hung his head and let her take his hand as she pulled herself up to sit on the couch behind him. Her palm felt unusually cold and clammy, but he didn't care. And for the first time in a day and a half, he felt something besides fear or anger.

He felt _hope._

Logic told him that he was supposed to hate her, but he couldn't. Not when she was here, holding his hand and picking up the pieces, despite the way he had treated her.

He loved those little calluses on her hands from her tools and her weapon.  
He loved that scent of machine oil that never seemed to leave her hair.  
He loved how she controlled him with a single sentence or a tender touch.  
He loved how he could tell her anything, show her anything, surrender himself to her and still walk away unscathed or even changed for the better.  
He loved how he needed her now and she was right here.

He loved her.

And he knew he was an idiot for trying to convince himself otherwise.

She began tugging gently at his hair, swooping it from the nape of his neck up to the crown of his head. Up and back, up and back, over and over, massaging him. Gently. Tenderly. As if this simple little caress was a salve for everything that plagued him. She whispered his name as if those two simple syllables were a solemn vow that anything he said would be their secret.

For a long moment he just gave in to her maternal touch before the words came from him. The eloquence he usually spoke with was gone, replaced by a child-like vocabulary wrought with barely contained emotions. "I'm scared and I'm angry and I'm just a horrible, terrible person."

"Why?" she asked, still brushing her fingers through his hair.

It was the one nightmare that would cause him to wake from a deep sleep, shivering in a cold sweat and panicked. He would be standing in a dark room, turn on the lights, and glance into a mirror to only see Garrett's face looking right back at him. That smarmy smirk turned up about to spew an insult and those cold, unfeeling eyes piercing through to destroy his soul.

Lowering his eyes to the floor, he admitted: "I'm afraid I'm going to wind up just like my father."

She climbed off the couch to sit next to him cross-legged on the floor. "How do y'mean?"

"Someone so hated that his funeral is nothing more than an exercise in futility where business deals are made. Someone so despised by his own family that they were making jokes over his body. Someone that just can't feel anything except anger. Because that's all I feel right now."

"But you won't," she said with authority. "Because you recognize these things. And it made you mad that his family was totally doing that."

"Don't you get it? I can't feel anything for him. I can't. It's just like when I heard Aston died. I didn't care. I didn't feel anything but this disgusting, cold anger and the single regret that I didn't get a chance to shove it in his face that I had become someone he wouldn't want to give away."

"Have you tried?" she asked gently, scooting herself around to face him.

"Huh?"

"Have you tried to feel anything for him?"

He nodded hesitantly. He couldn't lie to her, not right now. "That's what I was doing. I was looking for something, anything, that showed me that Garrett Oswell was not just the world's biggest conniving asshole."

"Did you find anything?"

"A cipher. Only Garrett would leave me something like that. At least Aston left me a diary."

She shook her head. "I think you're looking in the wrong place."

"Huh?" he asked, putting his arms around her waist, drawing her to sit closer to him. He _needed_ her closer.

"Papers aren't going to tell you about Garrett or Aston or even yourself." She kicked her legs out behind his back and touched his chest. "You need to look _here_." Pulling back, she stood up, though she seemed a bit unsteady in the simple motion. "Let's sit on the couch."

He rubbed his forehead, stood, and claimed the seat next to her on the sofa. Still sitting cross-legged and facing each other, she seemed more comfortable when she shoved a pillow between the frame of the couch and her right side.

"Tell me about Garrett," she said, taking his hands and squeezing them. "Tell me something you remember about him that told you he wasn't the jerk that everyone totally saw."

"Well," he began, searching his memories for at least one decent thing the man had done. "When I graduated from the military academy, he gave me a gift and even said he was proud of me."

"What kind of gift?"

"A necklace with a medallion on it. He said it had been in the family for six generations. But I never wore it. I didn't want to remind myself that I was his son, by adoption or otherwise."

"But he gave it to you." Touching her hands to his cheeks, she met his eyes. "Tell me more. Tell me about a great adventure you had with him."

"He took me to Warrior's Roost when I was a child. We went to watch the fights. I think he was betting on them and conducting business while we were there, but…"

"He still took you. And you had fun."

"I guess I did."

She kissed his cheek, chastely, nothing more. "Tell me about the first day he brought you home."

He touched his forehead to hers, noticing a little sweat on her brow. "We came by boat, from Barona. I was really upset and still injured from my little adventure with Asbel. He made sure I was comfortable in the cabin and gave me some toys to play with."

"What kind of toys?"

"Books, and a boat model. I suppose Aston told him that I liked those things."

She knit her fingers into his. "Yeah, I remember seeing that model hanging over your bed in Lhant."

"Aston bought me that when I was six. I became very ill, and I had to stay in bed for two weeks. They were afraid Asbel would catch it, so he moved into the guest room. I was really lonely, but every day, no matter what was going on, Aston would come visit me for an hour. We built forts with the chairs and blankets and he brought me that large model. We worked on it together and when it was it done, he suspended it from the ceiling. Mostly so Asbel wouldn't break it."

She ran her finger along his jaw. "He was a terror, huh?"

"Yes. Very much so. Most of my things ended up destroyed by him." He shook his head. "All I ever wanted to do when I was a child was design boats and sail on them."

"You can still draw them and I know you do. I saw a few sketches in your room last time I was here. You're kinda decent at drawing."

"That was a just a weak moment of childish nonsense." He dismissed the notion with a frown. "Besides, there's no place for a boat when I live in the middle of the damn desert!"

Sighing, she touched her nose to his cheek. "Still, that memory of Aston is beautiful. You should hold onto it."

"Don't you see?" he asked, shaking his head. "That's just another reason I'm a terrible excuse for a human being. I felt nothing when he died, either."

She turned herself to sit normally on the couch and then guided him to lie down on his side and rest his head in her lap. "Things were different then. You didn't know what you know now about why he sent you away and all that stuff."

"That doesn't change _anything_."

Rubbing his back in gentle circles, she whispered, "keep telling me about Garrett and how he brought you home."

"Well, he told me that I would really like Strahta—how it's hot but the capital was like an oasis. He told me I would have my own room and I could put whatever I wanted in it. He told me he had his own library and that I could have my own desk in there. He told me that he had no other children but I would have plenty of cousins to play with. He told me that I was going to go to a really prestigious school—the Strahtan Military Academy—and that he expected great things from me."

"What else?"

"I asked if I would have a mother and he looked really sad, probably the saddest I'd ever see him in the next ten years. He told me that his wife and daughter died in childbirth eight years before and that I should never talk about that again. I didn't, because as much of a jerk as he was, I thought he deserved that kind of respect."

"Someone was married to Garrett?" she asked. "I would've never thought he had a wife."

"I don't think he ever thought of her much. I couldn't find a single picture or letter or memento from her when I broke into his desk."

"Maybe he didn't want to be reminded of her. Maybe it totally hurt him too much to think about her. Maybe that's why he was a cold, unfeeling jackass."

"Or he was that way before he married her."

"But then she probably wouldn't have put up with him, right?"

He glanced up at her and gave a tiny smile. "The glass is always half full with you, isn't it?"

"No," she said with a shrug. "It's just twice as large as it needs to be. But really, both of these guys cared for you. They weren't perfect. But, y'know, nobody is, no matter how hard you want them to be."

"You're wrong," he said, rolling onto his back to look up at her. "You're perfect. You're the easiest person in the world to talk to. I could never tell anyone else these things. I would never let anyone else see me like this. You didn't leave me here when I was being a complete ass to you. You have every right to hate me for the things I said."

"You just lost your dad," she said. "Besides, you'd do the same for me. We take care of each other, Hu. We promised each other that. Remember? That night in Barona when we decided there was no turning back?"

"I remember," he answered. And did he ever. September of the previous year, just around his birthday, they had found themselves in Barona. After a decent meal, some passionate kisses and tender caresses, where he normally would've stopped, he didn't. True, she had been encouraging him to ignore his morals, coaxing him along with nips and whispers, begging him not to take his hands off of her and to just give in to what they both wanted.

He had kept asking if it was right and if she was all right. She had told him yes, it was fine, and he could do whatever he wanted to her. Still, had been awkward and she had even joked about how they probably needed a textbook.

But afterwards, they had sworn to each other that this was just the beginning, not an ending. There would be no shame or guilt. It had simply been meant to happen. Just like the two of them.

"We take care of each other," she repeated. "But neither of us are perfect."

He sighed and took one of her hands before returning to what he had been saying. "I did actually feel sorry for Garrett when I learned that about his wife. But when you consider that all he wanted was a male heir to carry on his precious name, it clouds the memory."

"Makes me kind of glad I don't have a last name to worry about," she said with a grin. "But I think you just did feel something for him and Aston there. A lot of somethings."

"You still don't think I'm a terrible person for not being able to shed a single tear for this man? Or even Aston?"

"You never mourned Aston?" she asked, tilting her head slightly as she brushed a finger along his cheek. "I mean, I know you said you didn't when he died, but even now?"

"No. I've been to his grave dozens of times and I just feel emptiness. All that I took away from those visits were hours of awkward silence."

She smiled down at him. "You should talk to him next time."

"What?"

"Talk to him. I'll bet he'll listen. I talk to my parents." She shifted slightly, stretching her arms over her head. "But, y'know, I gotta say, I'm kind of jealous. You had two dads. I only had one and I can't even remember his voice."

"I remember you saying he died when you were two."

She nodded before laying a finger to the tip of his nose. "Yup. Caught some kind of bug that was going around the Enclave that year. Kinda ironic, because his field of study was medicine. But I have his research. It's how I like to remember him because there are some things I found in his diaries that I don't like about him."

"What do you mean?"

Pursing her lips, she said, "he was pretty prejudiced against Solid Hairs. He didn't like how we were helping Fendel and totally caused a lot of problems for the Overseer because of it. He would've hated you and probably forbid me from seeing you and doing all the stuff we do."

"Somehow," he said wistfully, "I don't think that would stop you."

"It wouldn't, but I often wonder how different I'd be if I had been raised by my parents rather than y'know, Fourier. Because after we lost my mom, it was just us and she kinda tried to step up, but she was only thirteen and I'm more of a handful than Asbel ever was!"

He let a small grin grace his lips. "I think you turned out just fine."

"See? And I think the same about you. You won't turn into Garrett."

His eyes slipped back into that dark sadness as he sat up and pulled her into his lap. "But I've been around him for so long and for a few years I even idolized him! I mean, when I first came here, all I wanted to do was please him."

"And then you grew a conscience," she said. "Cuz I remember you putting your rank on the line to stop him from being a greedy bastard and hurting the people of Lhant."

He shook his head at the memory and wrapped his arms around her waist. "How can you be so certain?"

"Because I love you," she answered, kissing him on the forehead. "And I would never love a guy like Garrett."

"You make it sound so simple," he muttered, relishing her touch despite her lips being chapped and rough.

"But it is totally simple. I mean, you're a good guy. I've seen you be a really good guy. Otherwise, I wouldn't have started getting totally distracted by you. I mean, you remember that night on Telos Astue? Y'know, when Asbel decided to let Lambda take control? Cheria freaked out. But it wasn't Asbel or Malik or Richard that comforted her. It was you. You put your arm around her and took her outside and held onto her and told her everything would be okay." She brushed his bangs from his eyes affectionately. "It was really awesome of you. I mean, we were all scared but you didn't let her see that."

"I lied to her. I only said what was necessary to keep her focused on the mission."

"That's what you say, but I just remember seeing that kind of truth in your eyes and kinda wishing you had been looking at me like that."

"I tried that and you—"

She rested her chin on his shoulder. "Yeah, I _was_ an idiot. But we fixed that so we don't need to dwell on it, right?"

"Fine," he sighed. Holding her, he gave her a kiss on the cheek. "I'll concede that I did a decent thing for Cheria."

"Oh, come on, I'd say you did a few good things for her," she said, giving him a poke in the ribs. "I don't know too many guys who'd wear a dress just so Cheria could be a princess in some lame-ass play."

That dragged a grin out of him. "I have no recollection of ever doing anything so asinine."

"Yeah right. But y'know, you do kinda look hot as a girl."

"I can certainly walk better in heels than you."

She laughed. A big, marvelous, crazy laugh. "A drunk can walk better in heels than me. At least they could do it without going thunka-cachuka-thunk every other step!"

He shook his head. "I appreciate the attempts at humor, but—"

Interrupting him with a playful punch to the shoulder, she said, "c'mon, you gotta believe me on this. I know you want to close your eyes and let the world disappear, but it won't! I've seen you at your worst and I know your best and you can't just become someone else because you lived with them. You're you."

Feeling her breathing against him, he savored the sensation that it mirrored his own. Holding her even tighter, he began to believe her.

"I told you in Velanik that you were my greatest discovery," she said, meeting his eyes. "I meant that. Not just because we met, or because we're best friends, or because we like to bwah-ah-ah. But because you showed me who I could be. Nobody ever called me beautiful before. Nobody ever treated me like you treat me. Most people just think I'm weird and loud and crazy. But you don't care! You don't try to change me! You just accepted me as being me." She paused, putting a hand to his cheek. "You taught me that sometimes being serious is important. You showed me that sometimes you have to take better care of yourself so that other people don't worry so damn much. And you taught me that finding someone that you can love more than anything else in the world is the best feeling ever."

"Pascal…" he whispered her name as if it was the cure to every ailment in the world. Regardless of what she claimed, she was perfect. She and all of her Chaos were absolutely perfect and he was a fool to think he could manage to live without them.

"So don't go saying that you're a terrible person or that you're going to turn into Garrett. When you do, you hurt me because I love you. Okay? So promise you're not going to say that anymore."

"Yes, I promise." She could fix anything, it seemed. Even him. He let his lips trip across hers, as if wanting to taste her words again. Her damn, piercing, beautiful words.

His stomach growled and she pulled back before it could get any further than that. "Y'know, maybe we should get some food into you."

"The only thing that I want right now is to hold onto you." Knowing she had probably just saved his soul, he pulled her into a tight embrace, squeezing her into his chest. Burying his face into the crook between her neck and shoulder, he rested there. It was the most comfortable place on the planet.

"I love you," she said again, twisting just a bit in his arms. "But man, do you need to shave! You're all itchy and tickly and stuff."

He gave a barely audible laugh against her neck before kissing her there. He was certainly rough on the face and probably in need of a bath, but he didn't care. Right then, he wanted nothing more than to lay her down right there in the mess of the library and make gentle love to her. Kissing her again, he jerked up the tail of her shirt, expecting to brush his fingertips along her delicate sides.

Instead, he felt something rough wrapped around her middle. Curious, he plucked at it, slipping his thumb underneath and tugging it away from her skin.

She pushed him back and writhed away, whimpering in pain. "That hurts."

Lifting her shirt, he saw that she'd cut off her sleeves and fastened them with her scarf into makeshift bandages wrapped around the middle of her back. The crude pieces of cloth were caked in dried blood and dirt and stunk of pus and infection. His eyes widened in worry. "What the hell?"

"Bad stuff happened," was her explanation.


	3. Balance

Hubert stared out his bedroom window and cursed. 

During the hours he and Pascal had been in the library the sky became filled with a gale of dust. Sharp and angry gusts brought drifts of sand against the windows of the manor, each grain sounding its fury as it tried to demand entry. The tiles of the roof provided a dance floor for the elements and just added to this terrible cacophony. Gritting his teeth in annoyance, Hubert knew this particularly nasty storm would keep the world inside until it finished its assault and he also knew Pascal desperately needed a doctor. After carefully contemplating the situation and all of its outcomes for a few moments, he made the decision to treat her himself, lest the infection spread.

“Are you sure we can’t eat first?” Pascal whined as he positioned and then repositioned all of his tools on the nightstand. A collection of bowls filled with water, a stack of clean towels, some gauze, a jar of salve, a fresh bandage, matches, scissors, tweezers, and a knife were at the ready. She gave them a cautious eye. “I’m totally starved.”

Hubert frowned at her. “No. That wound must be attended to before it causes any further problems. Take your shirt off and lie down.”

Sand and dirt fell from her hair and skin as she removed the article of clothing and crawled onto the bed. She stretched slowly out onto her stomach, each inch of the simple movement racking her side with pain. Giving him a pout for good measure she said, “Be gentle. It’s my first time.”

He ignored her ridiculous objection and, using scissors, began to cut through the makeshift bandage she had created and the grime that had accumulated on it. Dirt, sweat, sand, pus, and blood had crusted on the fabric and gave off a terrible smell that caused him to wrinkle his nose in disgust. “How long have you been walking around with this dressing?”

She whimpered and clenched her fists at her sides as he was forced to tug on the scraps of cloth covering the wound. “Uhh, four days.”

“Four days?! You’re lucky you’re still able to stand.”

“Eh, I feel fine,” she said from behind grit teeth. “I could go take on the Rockgagong by myself right now, y’know.”

“I’d pay to see that fight,” he mused as he brushed her sand-caked hair off to the sides of her neck. After meticulously washing his hands in one the bowls, he gently wiped her clammy, flushed skin with a wet towel, being especially careful not to rub too hard. “You have a fever. You know that, right?”

“Eh, I just thought it was Strahta,” she answered, shivering from the cool water on her back.

Lathering her back with soap as gently as possible, he shook his head. “You can’t be serious?”

The closer he got to the wound on her side the more she flinched. “I’m not. I knew I wasn’t feeling great, but I figured it was just a cold or something.”

“Or something,” he said, rinsing the soap off with a clean damp towel and using yet another fresh one to pat her dry. “You could barely climb onto the bed.”

She sighed. There wasn’t a way she could argue her way out of that.

His brow furrowed in worry as he examined the large welt on her side. It was nearly the size of his palm and fully inflamed. The distinct claw marks next to it had scabbed, but were still oozing pus. Still, the pattern was one he’d seen many times in the desert. “Did you try to take on a Sand Drake?”

“Yeah, dumb move, I know.”

“Pascal,” he said with the utmost degree of seriousness. “What I have to do is going to hurt. I’m going to have to cut it open, drain it, pack it with gauze, and then bandage it. I’ll also need to put salve on the scratches and make sure they are clean. You have quite the infection and it can spread if not treated.”

“I dunno if I trust you do to this,” she teased with a wink. “I mean—“

He did his best not to let himself be distracted by her goofy flirting and raised an eyebrow at her. “You have no other options. The storm is so bad, we cannot open the door, much less go find a doctor. I assure you, I’ve done this before. This sort of wound is actually rather common when stationed in the desert, though most people don’t wait days to have it treated.”

“So you learned this in the military?”

He knelt by the bed and gave her a tiny, reassuring smile. “Actually in the Academy. I enrolled in quite a few healing artes and first aid classes.”

“Really? Why?”

“After I discovered that I could heal, I thought it would be prudent to learn more about the subject.”

She touched his hand. “How many times have you actually done this?”

“At least a dozen,” he answered, standing up. “Now, any other questions, comments, or concerns?”

“I’m so hungry!” She whined. “I’m seriously starving here, Hu!”

He struck a match and held it to the knife, turning the blade with diligent precision to ensure he sterilized every millimeter of it. “Cynthia and Mathias are preparing a meal as we speak. Perhaps while we eat you’ll be so kind as to tell me exactly what ‘bad stuff’ happened since I highly doubt it began with a Sand Drake attack.”

“Maybe, but it’s kind of stupid,” she grumbled, steeling herself by grabbing the sides of the pillow. “Just do it.”

Quashing the knife into a bowl of water, he told her the truth: “This will hurt like Hell.”

She clamped her eyes shut. “I know. Just be quick.”

Hubert took a long breath to steady his hand before drawing the blade across the bite. The stench of the infection and Sand Drake venom caused him to gag, but he resisted covering his nose and mouth. Holding his breath, he cringed at the sight of the drainage running across her skin in slimy, disgusting trails of yellow, white, and green. 

Crying out in pure, unadulterated agony, she strangled the corners of the pillow that barely muffled her shrieks. 

“I’m so sorry, “ he choked, wiping up the mess with a towel. While he knew it absolutely had to be done, the thought that he was causing her such anguish caused his heart to break.

“What stinks?” she asked, her voice straining against the pain.

“The infection.”

“That’s so nasty!”

Blotting more of the fluids, he sighed. “I know. But we’re not done. I need to push on it to make sure all of the pus has been removed. It’s going to hurt.”

She shoved part of the pillow into her mouth and bit down on it. “Do it.”

With the flat edge of the blade, he poked the welt, trying to force the last bit of the infection out. Her whimpers and instinctive twists away from the agony that he was inflicting on her made him want to vomit. And, while he told himself the right course of action was rarely the easiest course of action, he wished anyone else could be doing this to her right now. 

Finally content that the cavity was now clear, he brushed a tender hand to her shoulder. The worst was yet to come. “Take a few deep breaths.”

Pascal relaxed enough to follow the direction and offered him a brilliant, reassuring smile from under her tears. 

He took a tiny, thin strip of the cotton gauze and positioned it perfectly in a pair of tweezers. “You’re going to hate me for this part.”

“Gimme Ranger Red,” she said, nodding towards to his collection of figurines lovingly displayed on the shelf above his dresser. 

He retrieved the action figure and handed it to her. 

Gripping it like it was a rope holding her from falling off the precipice of some ruins, she nodded. “Okay. Do it now.”

Hubert spread the incision open and began packing it with the cotton in an effort to keep the infection from returning. Though he worked as quickly as he could, he had to fight her instinctual writhing against him. Her shrieks made it sound as if he was torturing her, and with each jab of the tweezers, his stomach sank. 

“There, done,” he finally said. Taking a long breath himself, he kissed her cheek. “I’m so sorry.”

She pushed herself up, the tears still cutting through the dirt on her face and her grip not loosening on Ranger Red.

He pulled the sheet up so she could cover herself but she just rubbed her eyes and shook her head. “I ain’t got nothing you haven’t seen. Quit being weird about it, sheesh.”

“All right,” he sighed as he reached for the salve. Dabbing some onto his fingers, he spread it over the wound and the scratches.

“Damn, that’s cold,” she said, twitching a little as she dried her eyes.

Wrapping the clean bandage around her middle, he pulled it just tight enough. He inspected his work and then gave a nod, telling her he was content with it.

Pascal placed Ranger Red on the nightstand. “So we eat now?”

“One more thing.” Crossing his arms over his chest, he felt the rush of eleth come from within. A quick incantation, and a gentle wind fluttered around her, rustling her hair and causing her to shiver and giggle. When the arte broke, he let himself smile. “There. That should make you feel a little better.”

She smiled. “Yeah, it does. Thanks. But y’know what would make me feel really good?”

“Food?”

“That, and a shirt. Since y’know, mine’s a mess.”

A slight flush crossed his cheeks as he silently cursed himself for not being more thoughtful. Reaching into one of his drawers, he produced a perfectly folded t-shirt.

She gave a dubious look at his selection. Sliding carefully off the bed, she helped herself to find one in his dresser. It took her less than a second to find the one she wanted. Red in color and decorated with a large starfish on the front, he smiled when he saw she had selected his favorite. 

“Ranger Red Attack!” she shouted, pulling the shirt over her head and striking a ridiculous pose with one of her feet in the air. 

He shook his head ruefully as the shirt practically fell off her shoulders and reached her knees. “All right. Let’s get something to eat, and perhaps you will be so kind as to tell me exactly what happened.”

“Maybe,” she said in that rare, serious tone that always brought him worry. “But y’know, you’re okay now, and I’m okay now. So, it really doesn’t matter.” 

He lifted her chin and kissed her on the forehead. “It does to me.”

\-----

Pascal managed to expertly avoid the topic throughout the meal. When Hubert pressed her, she would simply find one of her many tangents to travel or take exaggerated bites into the food. Despite his desire to know exactly how she managed to take on a Sand Drake and why she never returned to him in Velanik, he had to relent for the time being. Knowing he should’ve expected this battle from Chaos herself, he was still disappointed in not being able to gather the answers he sought.

When they were finished eating, she took his hand and led him back to the library.

Upon seeing Cynthia and Mathias at the stacks replacing the books, Pascal shook her head. “Oh, no. Hu made this mess and he’s gonna clean it up!”

The two servants looked at their master pensively.

“Yes, I will take care of it,” he said. She was right. It was his fault and his servants did not deserve to deal with the disaster he caused.

“Are you sure, Young Master?” the butler asked.

“He’s positive,” Pascal supplied with a bright smile. “You two have been up all night. You should take the day off!”

Again, they both looked to Hubert and he gave a nod. “Yes, and you both have my gratitude.”

Cynthia and Mathias stepped towards the door, both offering thanks as they left the room.

Hubert sat back down on the couch in the very same spot he had tried to find peace the night before—before everything went to Hell. He pulled Pascal down into his lap such that she was facing him, and rested his head on her shoulder. 

“We should clean this place up,” she said, twisting a little against her bandages.

“We should, but before we do, I want to hear what happened.”

“We could do something else?” she offered with a wink as she skimmed her fingers across his chest. “I missed you, Hu.”

Shivering at her electrifying touch, it took all the restraint he could muster not to give in to the temptation. He clasped her hands and brought them to his lips for a kiss. “Later, when you’re feeling better. Now, please, tell me what happened.”

She frowned—that dark, worrisome frown that terrified him the few times he’d ever seen it on her lips. “What’s to tell?”

“You left the inn in Velanik to buy supplies,” he said, absently playing with her hair. He hated to think only days before he had almost convinced himself that he didn’t enjoy the sensation of rolling those blessed strands between his fingers.

“Yeah, I did. And I bought supplies. And then this kid ran up to me and asked me to check out his family’s furnace because it was being all screwy. So I did. But it took more than just a kachunk-achunka and pshew pshew, so by the time I got back to the inn, you were gone.”

He grinned at the words she used. They were absurd, magical words that were complete nonsense and yet pure music at the same time. “I had likely returned to camp to make another excuse for the delay.”

She canted her head. “Yeah, that’s what I figured so I went there.”

“You went to the camp?”

She drew back from him and her expression became bleak. “Well, I tried to, but the two guys you had on guard duty didn’t let me in.”

“Did you tell them who you were?”

Wriggling from his grasp, she flopped to the other side of the couch. “Of course I did, and then they said that you said for me to wait there with them.”

“I gave no such order.”

“Yeah,” she sighed, tucking her legs up underneath her and crossing her arms defensively across her chest. “Well, these guys were Grade-A, mean-faced jerks to the eightieth power.”

“Can you describe them?”

She shrugged. “All of your guys look the same to me. Especially when they have their hats on.”

“So they didn’t let you in. Then what?”

She looked at the door as if she were contemplating running towards it. Keeping her gaze trained off in the distance and using her fingers for emphasis, she began relaying parts of the conversation that followed. While she spoke using her usual whimsical manner, the tone behind it was dreary and drawn. “Well, the shorter one asked me if I was really ‘the Lieutenant’s Research Girl’ because he’d ‘heard stories about me.’

“So I said, yes. And the bigger one asked to see my research. So I put my pack down and opened it and started to show them drawings of my ideas for using Foselos for communications systems and a way to cool down Strahta because it’s so damn hot I don’t know how you stand it here.

“After a few minutes of looking at my papers, they started asking me questions. At first, I thought they were serious questions but then I realized they were just making fun of me. Saying, ‘oh, I bet that’s what keeps the Lieutenant so interested’ and ‘he must really like running his hands through that research.’”

Hubert scooted towards her, reaching his arms out to draw her into an embrace. He’d learned, years ago, that her research wasn’t just a part of her career, or a sense of her pride, but it was fragment of her very soul. When things were going well with it, she would talk excitedly non-stop about the facts and bits she had gathered. But, when she struck a major setback--or sometimes even just a minor stumbling block--she would become distressed. It wasn’t a normal sense of annoyance or discouragement. Her devastation would be so consuming that she would withdraw from the world—and from him—until she found a solution to whatever problem she was tackling.

Leaning against him, she twirled a few strands of her hair around her finger as she continued. “So then, the small one grabbed my pack! I had everything in there—my weapon, my money, my supplies, my books, and all of my notes! They kept laughing as they threw it over my head between them and I kept telling them to stop, but they just kept saying mean things! And then they said something so mean, so terrible about you, that I kicked one of them.”

“What did they say?” he asked, guiding her back to sit on his lap and face him.

She let him hold her, but wouldn’t meet his eyes. Lifting her chin, he asked quietly, “What did they say, Pascal?”

Her gaze stayed fixed upon the books on the wall behind her. “The small guy said…he said…that you must really be an inbred freak from Windor to want to fuck a mop-headed creature like me.” 

“Pascal,” he whispered, letting his lips barely graze her cheek. “You know what people say about us matters not to me.”

“Yeah, but I still kicked him,” she said, and then her words became rushed with fury such that the sentences blurred into one. “I was so mad about what he said and how he took my stuff that I kicked him hard and he hit the ground and he was screaming and was all boo-hoo-I’m-hurt. And then the big guy grabbed me and lifted me up and said I was gonna pay. And then the little guy got up off the ground.”

“And then what?” Hubert asked, the rage rumbling under his words.

She paused for a long moment and rested her chin on his shoulder. When she spoke again, her voice was so strained and detached, the hairs on the back of his neck bristled. “Well, the big guy was holding me and the little guy tried to touch me in a way I didn’t like, so I kept kicking and kicking and kicking and I didn’t let him.”

His entire body heaved with anger as he drew a ragged breath. Although he was dreading to hear what she said next, he prodded her with: “A way you didn’t like?”

Her voice was quiet and she put a hand on his chest, as if to push that fury back into him. “A way I only let you touch me.”

He held her for many long moments before offering her a solemn vow. “I will deal with them. I will not tolerate such disrespect from my men towards anyone, much less to you, Pascal. I promise you this.”

“You don’t even know who they are,” she whispered, feathering her fingers through his bright blue hair. “I got away, though. I bit the big guy really hard. That’s when he dropped me and I ran to the port.”

His eyes widened and he kissed her on the cheek. “You bit him? Then I know exactly who these men were.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Well good, because they took my stuff and I want it back.”

“That’s what you’re concerned with? Not that they attacked you?”

“It was more of a fight and they got the worst part of it,” she said before giving a heavy sigh. “Anyway, so, I went to the port, but then I realized that military ships left from Zahvert. No way was I going back by your camp, so I caught a boat from where I was, but of course, I didn’t have any money. So, I sold the captain my suspenders and all of the gels I had on me and the charm you gave me.”

Sliding his glasses up his nose, he muttered, “The charm should’ve paid the passage for ten people.”

“Huh?”

“It’s solid platinum.”

“What?! Seriously? You’d spend that much money on me?”

Resting his forehead against hers, he told her the absolute truth. “I would give you whatever you desire, if it was in my power to do so.”

She took his hands in hers. “Anyway, I got it back. The engine of the boat needed a little woosh-woosh, and I fixed it in exchange for the charm back. Course, y’know, I kinda made sure it would need some work so…there’s that, too.”

“You scammed the scammer. Well done.” He tried to sound pleased at her ruse, but his thoughts were still scattered and it came off as sarcasm.

She didn’t notice. “So, then I got to Oul Raye and I crossed the desert with some Turtlez cuz I didn’t have a weapon or money or food or anything. When I got to Sable Izolle, I heard about your dad, and I didn’t want to wait another day to go with the transport. I wanted to be here with you, even if you were mad at me because no one should have to be alone for something like that. So, I started off on my own, got bit by that thing and it took me three days instead of two to get here. And that’s all the bad stuff, Hu.”

He nodded, still absorbing all of this and hating himself for not being able to help her in her time of need. She had been there for him last night despite everything she had to go through. She had been insulted, attacked, scammed, hurt—and he’d been here, feeling sorry for himself and destroying his library. 

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I’m so sorry all of this happened to you, Pascal, and I’m sorry for the way I treated you earlier.”

Ruffling his hair, she gave him a quick kiss on the nose before standing up. “It’s okay. We’re good and it’s over and done with. I fixed you when you were all yeesh, you fixed that yucky thing on my side, and I guess I can dualize another weapon. I just wish I could get my research back.”

“Oh, you will get it back,” he said, getting to his feet and drawing himself to his full height. “I will make sure you get it back. That will only be the first step of the punishment I will dole out to those men. They will be begging for mercy when I’m done with them.”

She raised a brow and looked at him, trepidation falling into her voice. “You’re not going to kill them, are you, Hubert?” 

It was so rare for her to use his proper name that it took him a moment to register hearing it. After a long pause, he answered her with another, much more pointed question. “Do you wish me to?” 

“No!”

“Then I will not.”

She poked him in the stomach. “Seriously? You’d kill two of your own guys for messing with me?”

He held a firm stance of attention as if reporting to a commanding officer. “After hearing what crimes they perpetrated on you—absolutely and without hesitation.”

“No, and that’s creepy, so don’t say that again!” She threw all of her weight against him, forcing him off balance such that he nearly fell over. “What about soldier’s honor and all that? I never thought you’d do something like that, Hu.”

Righting himself, he crossed his arms over his chest like a shield. “We’ve both killed, Pascal.”

“Yeah, enemies. Mostly monsters.”

“I would consider these two my enemies and monsters.”

She bit her lip and pushed him on the shoulder again. “Just…don’t.”

“I said I wouldn’t,” he answered, rubbing his eyes as his throat itching with raw emotion. “But that doesn’t mean that I’m not upset or hurt. I could care less what people say about me, or us, but the fact that two of my men had the audacity to lie to you, insult you, assault you, hold you against your will, and attempt to…to…” He couldn’t even say the word.

She hugged him, warm and gentle around his waist. “Hey, I made it, okay? And thanks to you and your super-Ranger-Blue-healing-skills, I’m going to be okay. And you’re going to be okay, too.”

He had to give a dark chuckle as she invoked the name of one their favorite comic book characters. “Are you sure? You don’t need to be so forgiving of such things. The world doesn’t work like that.”

“Then, change the world,” she said, putting a hand to his cheek and giving him a smile. “I’m okay. And killing those two jerks isn’t going to solve the problem, Hu. It’s just gonna make you more angry and upset and bring more fights and more killing.”

Taking her hand from his face, he gave it a chaste kiss. The wisdom she spoke resonated with him, as did her strength and bravery in surviving the entire ordeal. At that moment, he wanted nothing more than to hold her against him and just listen to the beautiful rhythms of her breath.

But she had other ideas because Chaos could never sit still or dwell on a subject too long.  
Wonderful ideas.  
Crazy ideas.  
Perfectly wonderful, crazy, chaotic ideas.

Grabbing his arm, she swung herself around him in an awkward dance step. “So, I told you what you wanted to know so now you have to do something for me.”

“Fair enough.”

She winked and spun around, nearly dislocating his shoulder. “Show me that cipher you found last night and let’s get to solving it.”

“Ah, yes, Pascal the Puzzlemaster,” he teased as he sifted through the papers the servants had stacked on the coffee table. “Here.”

The mirth of the challenge reflected in her eyes. She studied it for a moment before handing it back, clearly disappointed by the underwhelming task. “It’s not a cipher, Hu. It’s a combination to a safe.”

“Garrett doesn’t have a safe.”

“Sure he does, or did, or whatever,” she said with that goofy, gleaming grin that always managed to bring him hope. After a quick glance around the library she trotted into Garrett’s private office. “C’mon. Gotta be in here.”

Pascal eyed each wall of the tiny room with skepticism. When she turned to the one behind the desk, she held up her thumb, closed one eye, and stuck her tongue out at the portrait of the stag. “There.”

“Huh?” Hubert asked. He was still dizzy from the whirlwind that managed to solve his problems and his puzzles with barely an effort.

“See how the frame there hangs like a yeesh to the left and protrudes from the wall just barely a smidge?” she explained, the excitement in her voice rising with each word. “That’s from the hinges holding the painting up! The bottom one is probably a bit crooked or y’know, tired from being used all the time. Besides, you don’t usually hang stuff on walls with hinges, so I’ll bet you a million gald that the safe’s behind that!”

Hubert gave her a look of incredulity and then turned back to the painting. Examining it with a much more careful and critical eye, he did notice that it was just a bit off level and it did sit a tiny bit further out from the wall than it should. “I swear to you, I would’ve never noticed those inconsistencies.”

Pascal couldn’t resist a victory twirl. “Well, that’s why you keep me around!”

Still awestruck at her powers of observation, he tugged on the painting and it opened to reveal the safe. 

She bounced from one foot to the other in pure glee at conquering the problem he couldn’t the night before. “Now, lemme do the combination. I totally love treasure hunts!”

Since games and puzzles were one of her many passions, and since she had technically solved the impossible cipher, he stepped aside. She spun the tumbler with finesse and spirit, each number she entered eliciting a more ridiculous giggle of anticipation from her lips. With a flourish and a lyrical exclamation of “Ta-da” she tugged the safe open.

Hubert scrutinized the contents, but did not touch them as he suddenly wondered if this was the right thing to do. Garrett had always had his secrets. And now, as he glanced in at these items that his father had chosen to lock away, he contemplated if they should just be left undisturbed. 

“Well?” Pascal asked impatiently. “What’s in there? Lemme see! Lemme see.”

“Wait.”

“What?”

“Perhaps this isn’t the best course of action.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Really? Garrett wrote the combination down. I mean, y’know, he was a smart guy. He didn’t need to have those numbers unless he wanted you to open it eventually.”

“I suppose you’re correct,” he conceded. Reaching into the safe, he pulled out a roll of large, blueprint sized papers and placed them on the desk. 

Pascal nearly climbed over him to look. She tilted her head and she quickly thumbed through them. “Technical drawings for a bunch of cryas-powered stuff for his business, I guess. Booooring. I bet I could design a better ones.”

“Indeed,” he said as he put them on the floor.

“What else?”

He turned back to the safe and retrieved a ladies’ hatbox.

“Garrett liked to wear girl’s clothes?”

“Somehow, I do not think that is the case,” Hubert chuckled, opening the lid as he sat in the chair. “No, these are pictures and letters from long ago.”

Most of the letters were between Garrett and his late wife. Hubert placed them aside and did not read them. They were personal, and he reasoned that Garrett deserved that bit of privacy and respect. He sorted through the pictures, handing each to Pascal when he was done with it. All of them showed Garrett, his young wife, and various people from all walks of life in Strahta. Some Hubert recognized, others he didn’t. But in every single one, Garrett was smiling. 

And that, in and of itself, was a miracle.

Out of the hundred or so images he saw, one stood out. It was considerably larger than the others, the corners were creased, and the spot that his father must’ve spent hours upon hours holding it was worn and greasy. Garrett was dressed in a military uniform and stood happily next to his bride. She was blonde, with a serene face and kind smile. Behind the two of them stood a man and a woman, and in the distance, there was nothing but ocean.

“That’s Garrett? And his wife?” Pascal asked, pointing to the couple. 

“Yes, at their wedding, it seems.”

“He was in the Army?”

“Yes, though he rarely spoke of it.”

“And the people next to them? Is that…the President?”

Hubert nodded. “They were very good friends when they were younger.”

“Who’s the other lady?”

“The President’s wife. She was also Garrett’s bride’s sister.”

“That’s kinda weird,” she said, sliding up to sit cross-legged on the desk. “So then that means if you had married the President’s daughter, you would’ve married your cousin?”

“Technically, yes.” He set the picture down, contemplating how miserable Garrett must’ve been to sit here and stare at this picture, alone. 

“Do you ever wonder what that would be like?” Pascal asked, her voice oddly quiet. “I mean, y’know, if you had married her and all that.”

“No,” he answered with finality. “I do not.”

“You don’t like her, huh?”

“Quite the opposite, actually.”

Pascal swayed a bit as she sat on the desk and closed one eye. “I don’t get it.”

He gave a sigh and then the answer as if the explanation was causing him to collapse from exhaustion. “I could never marry Catherine. We may be good friends and cousins, but it would be unfair to her because while I might find a way to convince myself that I am happy in the relationship, I know that I could not love her as I love you.”

Kissing his forehead, she giggled. “Don’t kill yourself saying it, Hu.”

“I did not honestly think I would have explain such things to you.”

She laughed, and it was that completely off-key, bone-scrapping laugh that he loved so very much. “You don’t. I just like to hear them! And, I gotta keep ya honest.”

“Yes, well, I am quite thankful for that,” he said with a smile as he replaced the contents of the hatbox and set it off to the side.

She jumped up off the desk and looked back in the safe. “Oooh, there’s one more thing. Get up and help me get it out.”

He did as she asked. It was a large treasure box, and although it wasn’t heavy, it was certainly awkward to remove from the safe. Clearly Amarcian in origin, it smelled of must and distrust. 

Pascal clapped her hands excitedly as he placed it on the desk. “This has to be the mother lode. What do you think he had, Hu? I mean, I doubt he kept money in here. Maybe he had some awesome dualizing recipes? Or maybe some super-secret-Garrett-Oswell-trade secret on eleth extraction? Oooh…I bet it’s formulas for cutting cryas!”

He tugged at the top of the box, but it wouldn’t budge. “Damn it.”

“Huh?” She scooted in front of him to attempt to open it herself. When she looked down at it, she pouted. “Oh bananas! Looks like Garrett was all paranoid and hush-hush with this. It’s got a password on it. What else was written on the paper? It’s probably a hint.”

“That which is most precious,” Hubert quoted with a grimace, knowing the things his father had valued. “Try ‘power.’”

She quickly typed the word on the small keypad atop the chest. “Nope.”

“Money.”

“Nope.”

“Fortune.”

“Nope.”

“Influence.”

“Nada.”

“Cryas.”

“Nope.”

“Wealth.”

“Ziltch,” she said, defeated. An instant after, she snapped her fingers. “Wait! What was his wife’s name?”

“Charlotte,” Hubert said with the utmost reverence. 

“Didn’t work, either,” she sighed.

He touched his chin in thought. “Can we break into it without the password? I could shoot the lock off.”

Pascal shook her head. “I bet it has a failsafe on it that will destroy the contents if we try busting it. Most of these things do, y’know.”

“Of course it does,” he grumbled. “Things that were important to my father. Let’s see…try, ‘politics, capital, business, and clout.’”

Pascal furiously typed the list of words he recited, but nothing seemed to happen. 

Pacing around the small office, he struggled to think of more possibilities that Garrett would use to safeguard whatever he considered worthy of both a safe and a treasure box. “Perhaps we should consult a thesaurus.” 

Just then, the hinges of the box creaked and the lid swung open. Returning to her side, he asked, “What one was it?”

“None of those.”

“Well? What did you type?”

She smiled at him as she hopped up to sit on the desk again. “Your name.”

He sank down into the desk chair, struck by the weight of her words. “Very well. Let’s see what is so important that he kept it locked up tighter than the vault.”

“You should be the one putting your hands on this stuff first,” she said, sliding the box towards him.

Looking inside, he saw it was all just a stack of papers, folded or rolled in such a way that not a single corner was creased. Trying to decide how to proceed, he unceremoniously flipped the box upside down and shook all of the papers onto the desk.

“Now you’re doin’ things my way!” Pascal said with a laugh. 

He picked up a scroll and unrolled it. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

As his eyes darted across the words, the rage he’d felt the night before began building within again. With white-knuckles and grit teeth he read the cursed page not once, not twice, but three times—just to be sure.

“Hu? What is it? You okay?” she asked, shoving him on the shoulder.

He handed it to her.   
Wordlessly.   
Robotically. 

She read it quickly; how she managed to digest so much information that fast, he never learned. “So it’s the agreement that Aston signed to let Garrett adopt you. So?”

“Did you see the part about compensation?” The word felt rotten and rough on his tongue.

“Yeah,” she answered. “So in exchange for you, Aston got better trade routes and lower tariffs for Lhant. So what?”

“So what?” he asked. Taking off his glasses, he rubbed his eyes. “I always thought I was more than just a commodity to that man.”

“Uh, well, you were. You know that. Aston made mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. But you can look at this a different way.”

He sighed. Her damn optimism was peculiar, but he couldn’t imagine how she could turn this into something positive.

“Aston was gonna send you away no matter what, Hu. You know what happened with him and his brother. He didn’t want that for you and Asbel. So, he got something for losing you. So what? He could’ve traded you for a cart of gold or cryas or whatever, but he didn’t. He made sure the people of Lhant would have better trade with Strahta so they could have a better life. That’s not so bad, right?”

“Well, when you put it like that,” he muttered, replacing his glasses and sliding them back up his nose. 

She stood up and gave him a squeeze around the shoulders. “Y’know, there’s a lot of shoulda, coulda, woulda out there in the world. I coulda never developed a way for Fendel to use those weapons. But I did. And Aston got killed by one of them. I think about it a lot and I regret it, but the method I used also did a lot good things.”

He grabbed her hands and held them both, as if trying to draw some of her miraculous sanguinity and chaotic logic into his soul. “I don’t know where you’re going with that.”

She shrugged and smiled at him. “Yeah, neither do I, but y’know, you can’t dwell on other people’s mistakes.”

“When they affect me, I think I have the right to do so.”

“Suit yourself,” Pascal sighed, brushing a hand through her wild hair. “But will thinking about what people did ten years ago change anything right now?”

“I suppose not,” he mumbled, simultaneously loving and hating her beautiful, insane reasoning.

“What else is in there?” she asked, reclaiming her seat on the desk.

“Letters, cards,” he said, picking them up and looking at them. “From my family.”

She pulled an age-stained letter from the pile, and glared at the handwriting before handing it to him. “Did Asbel write this?”

Opening it, he nodded. “Many years ago, it seems—when we were first separated.”

The writing was childish and wrought with grammatical errors, but Asbel’s words from ten years earlier were entirely sincere. 

“What does it say?”

“What I expected it to,” he answered, reverently folding the letter and placing it back in the worn envelope. “That he left home to study in Barona and he hopes I am well.”

She playfully pinched his cheek and winked at him. “Awww. That’s sweet! Asbel was thinking of his Little Bro!”

“It was kind of Asbel, yes,” he said, opening one of the cards. It was a birthday greeting from his mother, one that he was certain Aston never knew was sent. “But I am quite disturbed that Garrett kept these from me. It may have given me an opportunity to better understand my brother and my mother. Perhaps if I had received them, I wouldn’t have had such disdain for either of them when we were first reunited.”

“Here ya go with the shouldas and wouldas again, Hu.” She shook her head at him, her red and white hair creating an impossible mix of irritation. “Mistakes are the only thing people can truly call their own, so we gotta let everyone deal with the ones they made, and not analyze them years later, okay?”

He nodded, not sure he could follow her logic, but still placing all of his faith in her. She’d brought him this far. The least he could do would be to give her the benefit of the doubt. 

A piece of sketch paper caught Pascal’s attention and she held it up. “Hey! This is one of your boats!”

Sure enough, it was one of his daydream-induced drawings of a ship he could never sail. The design was complete with annotations for certain features he would include on the boat, had it actually been built. “I must’ve left it out on my desk.”

“Yeah, I remember you working on this one last year,” she said, pulling open a scroll that was tied with a tassel bearing a shipbuilder’s seal. “Whoa.”

“What?”

She tented her fingers in front of her lips and beamed a warm, genuine, smile. “It actually is your boat. Garrett was having it built for you. To be delivered on your twenty-first birthday.”

Taking the paper from her, he gasped as he read the contract. Penned in Garrett’s very unique, left-leaning handwriting, he saw that her words were the truth. His design, his boat, his dream—all paid in full. And, for no reason other than his father wanted to make him happy. So much for thinking that Garrett was a selfish, soulless old man. No, perhaps Garrett just didn’t know how to show that he cared, and this would be his olive branch, had he lived to see it completed. Tracing his fingers across the Oswell family seal beneath his father’s signature, Hubert felt his throat tighten as he gave a silent thought of thanks that he hoped his father heard, wherever he was. 

Pascal touched a hand to his cheek and slipped off the desk to straddle him. “The one thing you really wanted. Garrett was gonna give it to you, Hu.”

Pulling her into a shaky embrace, he rested his chin atop her head. “Yes.”

“I know right now you’re beating yourself up with the thoughts you had about Garrett,” she said, holding onto him tightly.

“Indeed.”   
Moments passed, and then she gave him a sloppy, chaotic kiss on his nose. “See, you gotta look to the future. If you keep dwelling on this stuff, it’s never gonna get better and it’s just gonna make you totally miserable.”

He nodded.   
She was right.  
As she always was, it seemed.

She kissed him then--long and tender--as she tugged at his shirt collar like she was pulling him into a bewildering dance. Before it could go further than that, she drew back and grinned. “Y’know, I’ve been thinking about something.”

“What’s that?” he asked in between nips along her neck. She started it, damn her.

Playfully pushing him back, she winked. “I think my chaos needs your order and your order needs my chaos.”

“I can’t disagree with that,” he said with a sigh of slight frustration.

“Yeah, I figured you wouldn’t.” She straightened herself up on his lap and actually appeared to consider what she was about to say next. “So, after thinking about that, I was thinking that we should get married.”

“Huh?” he sputtered ineloquently as the disappointment from moments ago replaced itself with pure elation. How many times he’d wanted to ask her and always the words failed him, just as they did in Velanik! Though her sense of timing was always awkward, this was definitely uncanny, even for her. He almost wondered if he was dreaming. “You…do?”

“More sure than anything,” she said, kicking her feet nervously at his sides. “But I want the whole proposal. Y’know, I want to be a girl this time.”

He laughed heartily and set her on her feet before getting up. “Very well. Don’t move.”

Darting out of the library and up the stairs to his room, he quickly retrieved a tiny, precious box from his dresser drawer. Running back to her, he took her hand and led her out into the library. 

She laughed as he lifted her to sit on his massive desk. 

Placing the box in her hand, he knelt before her and his extensive vocabulary failed him yet again. It was a moment he’d dreamed of for years and yet here he was, completely tongue-tied by her. Finally he managed: “I carried that around with me for months, but I never knew how to ask you.”

She opened the gift and her eyes widened. It was a ring with tiny gears running across the band. Each gear held a different color cryas—green, blue, and red. Her voice actually squeaked as she put it on. “Wow.”

“I know it’s not the typical ring one buys for this sort of thing but—“

“Oh my gosh! The gears move!” She interrupted him. Whether she was even listening, he didn’t know, nor did he care.

“Yes, they do,” he said, drawing a long breath as he reached for her hand. He wanted to do this right. She deserved that.

Smiling up at her, he found the words he’d rehearsed in his mind so many times before and some others that truly came from his heart. “Pascal, you are my best friend and everything I am not. You are the strongest, kindest, smartest person I know. As you said, we may be completely different, but when together, we find balance and there is nothing we can’t accomplish.”

He paused, drawing another breath for strength as he watched her eyes reflect the emotion in his words. “When you said I was your greatest discovery, it was a compliment of the highest caliber. But actually, if I had not known you, or loved you, I don’t know where I’d be right now. You have taught me countless lessons over the past two years and I yearn to learn more in the decades to come. I cannot imagine trying to navigate a day in my life without you by my side. I want, no, I need you to share your life with me. Please?”

“Yeah,” she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “Yeah, I will. Cuz I don’t want to be away from you either.”

He stood up and swept her into a passionate kiss, rustling his fingers through her hair and nearly lifting her off the desk.

Giggling, she rose and held him around the waist. “Wait, though. What about all my tools? I can’t like, just leave them lying around to be all lonely.”

“I’ll hire as many transports as you need to get them there,” he answered as he dragged his lips along the tender skin on her neck.

“But what about my research?” She asked, tilting her head to encourage him further. She was teasing him now, and he loved every moment of it. “I can’t just abandon it.”

He had an answer for that, too. It was speckled between warm breaths he placed on her shoulder and his hands wandering up the front of her shirt. “I would never dream of asking you to. Travel wherever you need to. I have no intentions of tying you down. I just want you to always come back to me.”

Her breath hitched as she scooted herself back up on the desk. Once seated, her calloused hands found his belt and yanked him closer. “And what about my lab? It’ll be lonely without me.”

He kissed her again, seizing her lips in a fury of passion before making a promise he fully intended to keep. “I’ll find you a suitable place here. Even if I have to have one built.” 

“You mean I could design it to my own specs and stuff?” she asked. Giving him a couple of mischievous bites on his neck, she ran her hands up his shirt and spreading them wide across his bare chest.

“Absolutely,” he whispered as he let himself become lost in her touch. 

She blew in his ear and grinned. “Awesome!”

Grabbing her hands, he leaned over her, and playfully pinned her down on the desk. Holding her there, he grasped her shirt in his teeth and pulled it up before assaulting her stomach with a flurry of kisses—being careful to avoid her bandage, of course. “I suppose I should look into renting out the beach resort, then.”

She wrapped her legs around his waist and arched her back in anticipation of what he would do to her next. “Y’know, I got a better idea about that.”


	4. Epilogue

Hubert gave Pascal the wedding she always wanted. 

It was nearly as she had described almost a year ago during their private moments on Lhant Hill—a casual atmosphere with no plans or schedules, just plenty of food, drink, music, and most of all _fun_.

The only deviation from her original vision was to hold the entire event on the boat that Garrett had built for him. It took more money than he’d like to admit to expedite the completion by early summer, but as he watched the guests embark, he knew this would be perfect and worth every gald.

The boat had been decorated with flags stretched across the deck in the shape of stars, and streamers of ribbon, paper lanterns, and small pieces of cryas on wire fluttered from the masts and booms. As the ship moved out into the ocean, it was on the bow, with their friends standing in witness, that they exchanged their simple vows. 

“Honestly, I think I expected something more outrageous,” Asbel said, looking out over the water as the sunset painted a perfect end to the day. “The Sun Screen Ranger cake and food service robots are pretty tame, all things considered.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Hubert replied, grinning at his brother. “Though, I can’t take credit for this idea or any of the details. I simply paid the bill.”

Asbel took a sip of his wine as he leaned on the rail. “That’s even more surprising, I guess. I mean, you were always into boats, so having your wedding on one seems fitting.”

“Well, I did like the idea when she suggested it. Not just for the atmosphere, but because it forced her to keep the guest list manageable.”

“Now, _that_ does sound like you,” Asbel snorted.

Resting his arms over the railing of the upper deck and looking down at the guests dancing, Hubert shook his head. “I truly did not want the giant affair of state that Mother insisted that you and Cheria have. Did you even know half of those people?”

“Point taken. But you know, you’re really overdressed, compared to the rest of us.”

Hubert glanced down at his dress uniform and took a drink of his wine. He was most certainly out of place, as every single one of the guests was wearing beach attire and his bride was prancing around in a yellow sundress. “This was also at Pascal’s insistence.”

“Why?”

Hubert smirked. “Pascal likes how I wear it, and even more so how she gets to take it off of me.”

“That’s just too much information,” Asbel winced before finishing his glass.

The reaction being what he had pleasantly anticipated, Hubert pretended not to hear the sound of tiptoeing feet coming up behind him. As very familiar hands covered his eyes to play an even more familiar game, he gave an exaggerated sigh as he waited for the inevitable question. 

“Guess who!”

“Well now,” he teased. “I’m not certain, but could it be the woman who is responsible for this lovely party?”

“Maybe,” came the response, dragged out about ten syllables.

“And are you wearing a beautiful yellow sundress?”

“Yup!”

“Well, then, I can only guess you to be my wife.” The last word held the tenderness in his voice at its newness, and he gave a genuine smile as he turned around to face her. “Ah, seems I was right.”

She pushed a finger against his nose. “Your mom said you both need to get your butts downstairs and mingle.”

“Social conventions and obligations were never something Mother could ignore,” he sighed.

Asbel laughed. “Pascal managed to get her to wear a sundress to a wedding. I’d say that’s a step in the right direction.”

“Sure is,” Pascal said with a wink. “And she even said this is the best party ever! See, Hu. I told you. No one wants schedules and organized dances and other stuff. People just want food and booze and fun.”

Asbel led the way back down the stairs to the party, only to have Cheria grab his arm and whisk him away. 

“Heh,” Pascal said. “Cheria is quick”

“Huh?” Hubert said, not even noticing that his brother had disappeared.

She whispered in his ear. “I told her to y’know, take Asbel for a walk down to the cabins. Like I took you for a walk at their wedding.”

He closed his eyes and gave in to the habit of sliding his glasses up his nose. “I’m going to forget that you just said that, if you don’t mind.”

She laughed, that shrill, overpowering, beautiful laugh. “No, you never will. And you know it.”

Before he could form a retort, she disarmed him with a quick kiss to the cheek. “I’m gonna go make sure the food and drink robots I made are keeping everyone happy. Mecha Asbel has been a pretty good bartender!” She paused and then gave him another quick kiss. “You should dance with your mom.”

“I will, I promise,” he said, watching her trot across the deck. Taking a long breath of the sea air, he was pleased with himself for managing not to train, not tame, but beautifully coexist with Chaos.

A firm, heavy hand on his shoulder brought him out of the dazed moment. “I’ve been invited to many a wedding, Hubert, but this one is definitely the most unique.”

Turning to see the President, he pulled himself to attention. 

“At ease, soldier,” Paradine laughed, smoothing the front of his brightly colored outfit decorated with patterns common amongst desert traders. “Though, I should probably have you court-marshaled for wearing your dress uniform to this event, and without proper footwear at that. I’m not certain why the rest of us are in beach attire and you are not.”

“My apologies,” Hubert said, honestly uncertain if the man was teasing him. “But I wore this at my wife’s insistence.”

Paradine gave a wave of his hand. “Then all is forgiven.”

“Thank you, sir.”

A grin traced the older man’s lips. “It is I should who should thank you, Hubert.”

“Pardon me?”

“For coming to your senses about Pascal. I remember it was nearly four months ago that you were asking me to remove you from any missions involving the Amarcian Enclave.”

Hubert gave an uncomfortable cough at the memory, but said nothing.

“And then I hear that the Boatswain’s Union is working around the clock to finish a boat for your impending nuptials. I’m glad that things managed to work out.”

“As am I, sir.”

“Though,” the President said, bringing his voice down. “I do make sure those two men that were formally charged with treason are reminded daily that the only reason they still breathe is thanks to the infinite kindness of your wife.”

Hubert gave a nod and let himself smile in the presence of his superior. “As you once told me, sir—she is a remarkable woman.”

“Indeed,” he replied with a glance across the deck where Pascal was adjusting something one of her robots as a pretty blonde woman watched intently. “It seems she and Catherine have hit it off. I am glad our sides of the family are once again on friendly terms.”

“Yes,” he replied, knowing Pascal’s desire to explain anything and everything about her creations could be infectious. “I’m sure my father would be pleased to know that as well.”

“Garrett was a good man,” Paradine said. “Misguided at times, but I know he was proud of you, Hubert.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Oh,” the President said, as the boat began to turn to return to the dock at the Beach Resort. “It seems we’re coming about. I guess that means its time for me to give you your wedding gift.”

“Sir, no gift is necessary.”

“Nonsense,” the President answered as he pulled a piece of paper from inside his pocket and unfolded it. Hubert instantly recognized it as his written request for a week off following the wedding. “I’m granting you not one, but four weeks vacation, and it is mandatory that you take it, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” he replied wryly. 

The older man gave him a wink and walked away, leaving Hubert free to fulfill the promise he’d made to Pascal just a few moments ago.

He approached his mother and gave her a slight bow, inviting her to dance. Instead of her usual formal attire, she wore a pale blue sundress and kept her hair down such that it was brushing playfully against her shoulders. The change was good, he decided. Of course, anything that Chaos caused was good.

“I’m so happy for you,” Kerri said as she took his hands. “I’m also glad I didn’t have to plan this wedding. Your brother’s took about five years off my life. Though, I never thought I’d attend something so elegant without my shoes on.”

Hubert laughed as they moved gently across the dance floor. “One of Pascal’s requirements, I’m afraid.”

“It is one I will gladly abide by. I also love the name you gave your boat.”

“Pascal helped with that, too.”

A sudden break of the wave caused Kerri to miss her step. As she regained her balance and slipped back into the rhythm, she smiled at him. “I figured. It is perfect for the two of you.”

“Yes, I agree. I was just granted four weeks of vacation, so we will sail to Lhant and visit if that is all right.”

“It is always all right to come home, Hubert.”

He smiled at her—a warm, kindly smile—and as the song finished, gave her a bow. 

Just then, as land came into sight, a loud boom from overhead caused everyone on board to glance up. The night sky exploded with colors as fireworks burst above. Hues of red, gold, green, and blue erupted into images of stars and flowers as the guests burst into applause.

Pascal appeared out of nowhere and grabbed him around the waist. “Surprise!”

“Exceptionally well done.”

“Heh, you didn’t think I’d finish this party without blowing something up, did you?”

“I assumed it was coming sooner or later.”

“Just wait. I saved the best for last,” she said with a wink. Tapping her chin in thought, she added: “Where are we gonna go after we drop everyone off?”

He pulled her around in front of him and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I’m not sure, though since I’ve been granted more weeks of vacation, perhaps an exploration of sorts in order.”

“Oooh! Now you’re thinking like me. I like it!” Turning around, she pointed at the sky. “Here it comes!”

He wrapped his arms around her waist and looked up to see the finale. It was truly a work of art—she had created a portrait of the two of them out of fireworks. The guests gave a collective “awww” and he whispered into her ear, “Beautiful. Simply beautiful. I trust today was to your liking.”

“Yeah. It was everything I dreamed it would be, y’know?”

“Everything?” he teased.

“Well, except that part about you jumping out of a cake.”

“The day isn’t over,” he teased as he kissed her cheek. “You may still get that wish.”

“Awesome. I love that you’re full of surprises, y’know,” she said, flicking a finger at his bangs as _Middle Ground_ prepared to dock.


End file.
